


Wolf and I

by t_pock



Series: Beasts of the Earth According to Their Kinds [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hannibal chases Will through the woods, Hannibal gives Will things, Hannibal invites Will to things, M/M, Season One Divergence, Will Figures It Out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-11 09:18:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 46,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2062599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_pock/pseuds/t_pock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Will wonders what constitutes good prey, and answers his own question—a high risk, a good chase, a hard kill. Tangentially he asks, “What’s the longest something’s survived you?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Hannibal says, “Never through the night.”</i>
</p><p>Or, Will encounters a creepy stray and discovers the truth about Hannibal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You Are The Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> I'm only five episodes into Hannibal but I couldn't help myself. The show is absolutely intoxicating - never has a fic welled up within me so fast.
> 
> I am a green and ignorant fannibal. Questions I didn't bother getting answers to while I wrote: when is this set, do Will's dogs already have names, where the hell is everything, how do crime scenes work, what are everyone's actual jobs, what does Will's place look like, what does Hannibal's place look like, characterization what characterization, and so forth. Please be aware that everything in this fic has been done before. I hope it gets done again. If you're interested in a plain AU with early season one dynamic and gratuitous animal analogies then you're in the right place.
> 
> The short version: I just wanted to write a chase through the woods.
> 
> Title and chapter titles from Oh Land's song of the same name.

The dawn is pink as flesh when Will steps outside with his dogs, the night peeled back to reveal raw daylight. He shivers in his ratty t-shirt and briefs, goosebumps pebbling his skin, and stalls at the threshold of his front door while the mutts rush into the yard, paws slipping on icy dew. The chill air shocks some awareness into him; he grits his teeth to stop their chattering and lets himself tremble awake.

The dogs nose through the grass and mill around the lawn’s lone tree. A few pause to take a piss but the rest notice the songbirds in the branches like low-hanging fruit and begin scrabbling at the tree roots, bodies steaming in the early morning cold as they circle the trunk and bark.

Will sees the carcass before they do.

It’s a bloody mound on the far edge of the yard, the shredded remains of an eastern gray squirrel with its throat ravaged and its innards clawed out, likely torn apart by one of the foxes Will sometimes spies skirting the edges of his property. Its guts are the same pink as the daybreak, marbled with white veins of thin fat and dusted with frost, sitting on a frozen plate of blood.

Suddenly Toast lifts his head and scents the air, and his curly muzzle swings around. He woofs and the other mutts perk up. Will doesn’t react fast enough—by the time he thinks to whistle the pack is already dashing over.

Buster gets there first, Gizmo at his tail. Will jumps down the porch steps and sprints across the yard, cold-stiff grass blades pricking the soles of his bare feet, but he’s too late. The dogs are pushing their faces into the carcass, sniffing at the matted plume of its tail, running the kibble-dull edges of their teeth along the ragged flaps of skin. Rusty is licking the guts.

Winston and Dakota obediently retreat when Will hisses for them to _git_. He has to grab at the collars of the rest of them and tug them away; it takes most of his strength to haul Angus back. They whine at him plaintively but he snaps his fingers until they’re all sitting on their haunches, kneading the ground with longing.

He has nothing on hand so he improvises with some sticks, nudging the squirrel until it pries loose of its congealed blood. Gizmo risks shuffling forward on his belly and puts his filthy muzzle on Will’s foot, salivating; Will frowns at the red drool before he flings the carcass as far as he can. Toast yips as it arcs out of sight, but none of the dogs dart after it.

Will orders them back to the porch, ducking into the house and coming back out with a bucket of warm water and tattered rag. He berates them as he scrubs their faces, reminding them that neither he nor they like trips to the vet, smiling grimly at the meek way they bow their heads to the deck. Dakota licks him apologetically as he dumps the dirty water and he flinches at the copper smell of her breath.

The dogs slink inside and go back to their beds when he points at the door. He follows them in, turns the lock with numb hands, goes to the kitchen to set his coffee to dripping, and then stumbles to the bathroom for a hot shower, Winston trailing him to lie down on the bathmat. The water feels good on Will’s chilled skin, and then scalding, but he doesn’t get out until the smears of blood on him swirl down the drain, pink.

=

Jack yells for the entirety of the car ride back to the Bureau, and Will knows by the way he shoves the glass door of his office shut and snatches down the blinds that he means to keep yelling. Anger makes Jack seem titanic; even though he strides over to the throne of his desk Will still hunches against the wall.

“So, Special Agent Graham?” Jack asks him, because he knows it’ll make Will wince.

Will doesn’t disappoint. “I’m sorry, Jack,” he says.

“Not sorry enough.” Jack stabs a pen in his direction and Will feels it like another knife to the shoulder. “You may have just cost us this investigation.” The accusation is not unfair. Will lowers his eyes to the floor.

He hadn’t gotten anything from their visit to the victim’s house, not from the trashed bedroom with all its evidence of a struggle and not from the overwrought mother they interviewed afterward. The scene was rife with opportunity for interpretation, but when Will tried to get a foothold—glee over the spray of blood across the matelassé coverlet, or vindication at the spider-cracks in all the room’s mirrors—the only thing he’d gotten for his efforts had been a persistent migraine that not even three pills could abate.

The pain made his tongue sharp—when Jack turned the interrogation over to him, he’d been insensitive, almost cruel. Jack managed to soothe the mother back into coherency, but Will had mishandled her, irrevocably.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” he repeats.

Jack digs his knuckles into his temples like Will has given him his migraine and more. “Get down to the lab,” he orders, “and look at the body again. Figure out how to make yourself useful or get out of the way.”

Will tucks his chin to his chest and leaves.

=

It’s just past noon and the day is overcast and pale. The thin cloud coverage makes the sunlight watery and cold, but Will is sweating in his car because the heat has only one functional setting and the windows don’t have enough insulation to keep the passing wind from turning the vehicle into an icebox. He doesn’t shed his coat—the moment he kills the engine the chill will seep through it.

He usually drives back to Wolf Trap in the spare warmth of the afternoon. Today his 2:30 class was canceled on account of scheduled room maintenance, so he’ll be home early. His pack will be happy but he’ll have to bring more firewood in from the shed to keep the downstairs inhabitable. Fingers tapping erratically at the steering wheel, he wonders if he’s chopped enough to last them the week.

Will is ten minutes out from his house when he spots a dog on the road.

It’s crouching on the asphalt, chewing on something in the middle of the lane, unconcerned with his approach. Will slows to a stop as close as he dares before he puts the car in park and considers the mutt. Even through his foggy windshield he can see its ribs showing under its filthy, mangy pelt. Its muzzle is red with the blood of whatever it’s eating—road kill, Will suspects.

The backseat is covered in his scattered notes, the wrinkled sheaf of paper he didn’t read from but clutched all through his single morning class to keep his clammy hands occupied. His suit jacket and bag are discarded there too. He twists in his seat to shove it all to the floor before he knows what he’s doing; then he unbuckles himself and opens his door.

The cold infiltrates his clothing immediately, but he ignores the prickling of his skin and moves forward. He keeps his advance slow and non-threatening as he makes his way toward the dog, waiting for a growl or an abrupt retreat. He’s surprised when the mutt does not react. Will takes a few cautious steps closer. He gets within six feet of the dog before it raises its head to regard him.

Will halts, unnerved. The dog’s eyes are blank.

This close he can smell the road kill, ripened by the weak sunlight. The dog swallows and licks its chops, and the flash of its stained teeth makes Will looks down properly at the animal ripped open beneath it. It’s been majorly disfigured by the collision that killed it, but Will can see the pads of its paws, the shape of its snout.

He realizes that the road kill is another dog.

Will sighs and drags a hand through his hair, fingers catching in the curls. The bloody dog dips its head and returns to gnawing at the exposed bone of the dead dog’s rib cage. Will looks at its pinched waist and dirty fur once last time before he turns around and goes back to his car. He gives it a wide berth as he starts down the road again.

When he looks in the rearview mirror, the bloody dog is looking back.

=

Will ends his lecture on the evidence of cult worship in the mobile-home murders of a Jacksonville killer five minutes after the hour. By the time he clicks to the final slide of his presentation, a picture of a couple strung up like hammocks inside their unit, the students are fidgeting in their seats. More than a few of them glance at the clock. He bites down on the rest of his words and dismisses them with the reminder that he posted another prompt on the course website. There’s a controlled race to the exit before he finishes his sentence.

He alphabetizes the folders on his desk as he waits for the exodus to finish. It usually takes a while—students like to loiter after class, and he can’t always tell which among them want to gawk and which among them have legitimate questions. Both make him uneasy.

To his surprise, the room clears out within a minute, with the exception of one student. He’s tall as a tree and just as broad, head and shoulders above the other students; they ebb around him on their way out like water parting around a rock. When the room is empty but for the two of them, he stalks up to Will and tosses a crumpled paper onto the desk. Will recognizes the spindly scrawl of his own handwriting, as well as the red slashes of his terse corrections. The paper, a submission on a recent crime scene analysis, is bleeding with them.

The student accuses Will of assigning him the wrong score, unjustly low. Will doesn’t like to debate grades; he skims the paper one more time before telling the student he stands by his original evaluation. The student leans forward to plant his big hands on the flat of Will’s desk, a hard edge in his voice, and Will lowers his chin even as he refuses a re-grade. Eventually the student leaves, throwing the paper to the floor.

“What a charmer.”

Will is startled by Alana’s voice; he hadn’t seen her by the door. She’s bundled up in a navy pea coat and an orange shock of a scarf, fresh from outside and still thawing in the warmth of the Academy building. She has a tote full of legal pads and psychiatric journals—she’s just passing by, Will realizes.

“Sorry you saw that,” he mutters, dropping his eyes to her high heels and the way her exposed ankles are still glowing from the autumn cold.

“Not like I’ve never seen macho bull before,” she says, waving away his apology with a grimace. “Some people think they can get whatever they want if they throw their weight around.”

Will shrugs a shoulder. “They see me twitch and assume I’m a pushover.”

“It’s a poor pass at dominance,” Alana insists with disdain.

Will wipes his palms on his pants and nods.

=

The night has teeth and its spearmint bite tears Will from sleep. He blinks awake with his hair damp but his sheets dry and is confused by the fact that he hasn’t awoken to soaked clothes and the lingering specters of his dreams—by the fact that he’s shivering, when he usually runs hot during the small hours. He had left the sputtering house heater off—with his night sweats, he didn’t usually need it.

The scrabble of nails on his wood floor turns his head. He squints—the panes of his windows shatter and scatter the blue-white moonlight and make it hard to see, but he can just distinguish the shapes of his dogs in the gloom. He doesn’t understand what he’s seeing until he hears the bass rumble of Rusty’s woof and Dakota’s quiet yip.

He stumbles out of bed and gropes around in the darkness until his fingers brush Rusty’s collar, and he yells _quit_ as he pulls the big dog off of Dakota where she crouches on the sooty, threadbare rug in front of the hearth. Relieved of the weight and intention, Dakota trots over to his bedside, but Rusty twists to growl and snap at the hand Will has fisted around his choker, humid breath hot on Will’s wrist.

Shocked, Will almost lets go. Instead, he whistles sharply, and all of his dogs put their bellies to the floor.

“What the _hell_ ,” he begins wrathfully, voice cracking on a shout, before he squeezes his eyes closed and digs his nails into his palms. Buster’s ears are flat against his head and Toast has wedged himself under one of his armchairs. He tries again, quieter and through his teeth, “What the hell’s gotten into you?”

Rusty doesn’t resist him again as he pulls him into the cage he keeps handy for additions to the family and for rare punitive measures. Dakota allows him to shut her in the kitchen without fuss. Without them, the pack looks thin. Will immediately feels like a villain, but he just scrubs his hands over his face and lies back down on his boxy mattress and wonders why Dakota hadn’t chased Rusty away herself.

=

Will resurfaces with a teacup in his hand and a plate of pumpkin scones on the coffee table between him and his neighbor. Perched on the loveseat across from him, Pratishta is recounting how she met Donavan during her doctorate studies in Glasgow. The pale yellow of her blouse matches the daffodil motif curled around the rim of her chinaware; the pastel color is luminous against her brown skin.

There’s a lull in her story, and since Will can’t remember anything before Donavan mumbling through his proposal the only thing he can think to insert into the expectant pause is, “That sounds…nice.”

He coughs to clear the grittiness from his voice and tries to arrange his face in such a way as to hide the tidal wave of panic rising up in him at the knowledge that he’s lost time again. He can’t remember how he got here. The last thing he recalls is tinkering with the radio in his kitchen to get some bluegrass playing while he scavenged his cabinets for an apathetic lunch.

He wants desperately to flee. He’s brought Pratishta brook trout from the stream by his property before and shared a quiet beer with Donavan, but shaking out of a disassociation in the middle of their parlor is the last thing he wants, even if they are the ones he occasionally enlists to look after his pack when duty calls, the only people for miles he’s bothered to involve himself with. He wants to go home where he can have a mental breakdown in solitude.

Pratishta has the beginnings of crow’s feet in the corners of her big, dark eyes. They crinkle at the tremor in his voice, and Will imagines that she might have had some idea he wasn’t all there when she invited him in.

“It was,” she says kindly. “It is.” She reaches over to pluck the teacup from his grip and place it back on its saucer, buttering a scone and gently pressing it into his hands as she shrugs, “But enough about that. I’ve been babbling.”

Will feels like a piece of shit. “I don’t mind,” he says weakly. He can’t muster anything more convincing.

“It’s perfectly alright. Eat,” Pratishta urges. “Take as many as you like.”

Will eats four more. He meant to excuse himself after the first, but they sit heavy and warm in his stomach and he knows that whatever lunch he threw together would have been as dirt in comparison. He feels guiltier with every bite.

Finally he offers, “You guys seem good together.” He doesn’t know if it’s true, but it sounds like the kind of thing he should say, and the kind of thing with which to segue into a goodbye.

Pratishta smiles at him and the crinkles deepen. “We always have,” she tells him with cheek. “Since the beginning—when he was just a lab rat and I had no credentials to my name.”

Will stiffens like he’s been defibrillated, and abruptly knows where his mind was. “Credentials,” he echoes, and he sees the headshots of the women tacked to a board in Jack’s office, connected by taut red string like straight veins across eastern Tennessee. His phone is in his hand before he realizes he’s moved.

Jack answers on the second ring. “It’s their résumés,” Will says. Belatedly he turns to Pratishta and mumbles a sheepish, “Sorry.”

“What?” Jack’s voice is tinny through the call.

“That’s how the Ghoul is choosing them—he’s intercepting their résumés.” Will’s body is thrumming with energy; it’s crackling over his skin and making him tremble. He sees himself thumbing through applications, perusing past experience until he finds what he’s searching for. “Daycare—he’s taking them from daycares—”

“Gutierrez!” Jack bellows away from the mouthpiece. “Tell Choi I want a geographic cross-reference on child care facilities!”

Will can just barely hear the background _yes, sir_ and the scuffle of shoes on linoleum. “She touched him and nobody—he went to a daycare and one of the staff—nobody believed him then, but they can’t ignore him now—” His tongue is tripping over his thoughts.

“Good work,” Jack tells him, and his tone is so severe that at first Will doesn’t recognize it as a compliment.

Will can feel his shoulders straightening. “He’ll have an absent father, a mother that worked too many jobs—”

“Get here now,” Jack orders, but he sounds eager, the closest he gets to pleased. “That’s something to work with, Will. That’s good work.”

Will can feel his face flush. “On my way.”

It’s not until he ends the call that he remembers where he is. He turns around in time to see Pratishta return from the kitchen. “I have to go,” he tells her awkwardly, ashamed of the fact that he’s glad for the excuse.

She smiles and the crow’s feet become youthful laugh lines. “It’s perfectly alright.” She hands him a plastic baggy and a thermos and escorts him to the door with a small hand in the crook of his arm. “Scones and tea for the road. Keep the cup, and try not to be a stranger.”

Will feels something like overwhelmed as he jogs back to his house and gets in his car. The flush lasts the entire drive. The scones do not.

=

“Where are you tonight, Will?”

Hannibal’s voice rises a few degrees above cool neutrality to something placidly insistent. It thaws Will out of his thoughts, makes his face heat up as he realizes he’s been staring into the vortex design of Hannibal’s paisley tie and floating on the sense of vertigo it evokes. He drags his stare up to Hannibal’s chin and, seeing in a flash the steady-handed swipe of a Thiers-Issard razor, murmurs, “Sorry, doctor.”

Hannibal lowers his head—like a lion bowing to drink, Will thinks, and frowns—and forces eye contact that Will immediately shies from. “You’ve been wandering.”

Will shakes his head. “I’m here,” he says, although it’s not perfectly true—he’s stuck on trying to figure out why he saw the feral nonchalance of a big cat in Hannibal’s dignified aloofness.

“I don’t seem to have your attention,” Hannibal disagrees politely, but the chastisement is not so subtle that Will doesn’t feel distinctly rude.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. This time he mostly means it. “What were we talking about?”

Hannibal sits back in his chair, tugging on the end of his vest to keep it from pleating. “You were telling me about the success of your latest case,” he informs him. “But I think we should move on to the source of your distraction.”

Will’s eyes wander to the crisp fold of Hannibal’s pocket square. He briefly entertains the thought of sidestepping the discussion altogether, aware of how juvenile he’s about to sound, but he knows that the surgical precision of Hannibal’s couch talk will cut to the heart of his bullshit. “It’s my dogs,” he admits.

“Oh?” Nothing changes in Hannibal’s face, but Will still feels embarrassment spread across his own like a conflagration.

“They were acting strange the other night,” he says defensively. “Rusty tried to bite me.”

“Strange indeed,” Hannibal says, and Will is prepared to clam up at the condescension until Hannibal asks, “What happened?”

Will runs a hand through his hair. “I pulled him off of Dakota after he tried to mount her.” He betrays himself by tripping over the word _mount_. “He growled at me. He’s never done that before.” He hates himself a little at how much distress leaks into his voice.

Hannibal spreads his hands. “Does his response truly shock you?” He crosses his legs at the ankle, and Will’s eyes are caught by the gleam of his Italian-import leather shoes. “Domesticity only does so much for beings shaped to be feral.”

Will watches him lounge in his seat—like a lion, he thinks again—and goes back to staring resolutely at his tie. “I guess you’re right.”

=

The diner squats between the parking lots of a grimy gas station and a seedy motel immediately off of an I-95 exit. It’s far from home, an hour down the way to North Carolina, but Will doesn’t mind the commute, not when he can sit by himself with a grainy cup of coffee and mutually ignore the nomadic truckers that pull over for late breakfasts and minimal conversation.

He walks in and steals the booth in the corner out of habit, marking his territory with his jacket and bag on the seats and his laptop on the table. The sole waitress, a thin older woman with too much mascara, greets him by name and automatically shouts for his usual French toast special. She serves it to him with a maternal pat on the shoulder and leaves him to his meal.

His eggs are swimming in the bacon grease and his toast is afloat in syrup, but he doesn’t complain, just rolls up his sleeves to keep them out of harm's way. He eats as he compiles slides for next class’ presentation, because evidence photos go better with hangover food. He can feel a few eyes on him and the autopsy shots he’s clicking between, but no one bothers him.

The diner is usually quiet; most of the patrons who drop in are meek from driving through the night and don’t want more trouble than it takes to flag down the waitress for some creamer. Will likes that. He’s not unusual in a place where everyone avoids eye contact.

His eyes flick up against his will, however, when a commotion starts near the door. It’s two truckers getting in each others’ faces, both of them haggard from lack of sleep. Their voices rise above the gritty Southern ballad playing behind the counter, thick Mississippi accents rendering their argument indecipherable even to him. Will can’t tell at a glance what started it; the raised tension crackles in his belly.

One of them pushes the other and the waitress puts herself fearlessly between them, yelling and swatting at them with a menu until they take it outside. Will watches the fight resume in the parking lot. One of the truckers grabs the other by his dirty collar, shaking him hard, and he goes limp with good instinct.

Will feels sweat gather at the nape of his neck. He leaves.

=

Will’s right hand quivers as he looks at the cadaver, pale as paper under the morgue lights, skin scrolled back like parchment to reveal the startling color of its viscera. He closes his eyes and sees the body sitting upright, hands tied together and resting in its lap. He watches the white belly split and spill its cornucopia guts into its palms, a thanksgiving. When he opens his eyes, he finds his hand in the air, wrapped around an imaginary handle and completing the arc of a smooth slice.

“Gratitude,” he mumbles. “They were grateful.”

“What’s that?” Beverly says. Will jumps. “Sorry, thought you were done.”

“I am,” he says, turning away from the corpse. He is; he won’t be able to divine anything else from the innards.

Across the room, Beverly snaps her gloves off and smiles at him. “Then let’s beat it.”

He follows her on the way out, listening to her idle complaints about staying past clock-out and missing dinner again. He’s still half in his head, reimagining the disembowelment until the mottled entrails burn a rainbow into his brain, but the rustle of fabric snags his attention as Beverly sheds her lab coat. He sees the long red welts on her back a split second before she pulls a sweater over her tank top.

He doesn’t look away fast enough; she notices his stare.

“Oh,” she says. “If the words ‘scratching post’ leave your mouth, I’ll hit you.”

Will stammers. She laughs at him.

“Joking,” she assures him, taking her hair down from its messy bun. She takes pity on him and says, “You can ask.”

Will doesn’t really know how to. Finally he ventures, “…Did you get in a fight?”

He goes pink at the guffaw she lets out. “Not quite. Just some sheet wrestling.” His face must betray his uncertainty. “You know.” She shrugs and elaborates with equal measures of sheepishness and mischief, “I don’t mind if things get rough in the sack.”

“Oh,” he says, and averts his eyes.

She laughs at him again and leaves.

=

Will’s rug is threadbare to the point of sheerness, and it does a poor job of insulating him where he sits on the chilly floorboards with his fishing rods tossed over his thighs. Angus is a furnace against his back, the only dog he hasn’t shooed away since it’s their fault he’s hunched over tangled lines with his glasses pushed up his forehead, blunt nails struggling with fine knots. Gizmo, the head of the enthusiastic charge toward the crackle of the food bag that morning, is casting him appropriately apologetic looks from the time-out corner for knocking over his fishing gear.

“You act like I don’t feed you,” Will grumbles, but he clicks his tongue to let Gizmo up despite himself.

He’s almost freed his Fenwick from his White River when Angus lets out a thundering bark, startling him. He tosses a curt _quiet_ over his shoulder and is nearly tipped over when Angus surges to his feet.

Will looks back and sees Buster snapping at Angus’ paws. “Hey,” he starts to say, surprised at the antagonism, but before he can get much more out Angus snarls and bites the triangle of Buster’s ear.

Buster wilts and his yips disintegrate into whimpers. Angus chews on his ear until he’s satisfied with Buster’s surrender, releasing him with a final woof before slumping to the rug and curling back up against Will’s back.

Will thinks about reprimanding them for the scuffle but they settle down without any more fuss. He returns to his rods.

=

The rain is coming down like needles when Will crawls out of the bowels of the Bureau building. He halts in the lobby, trembling from both a surplus of caffeine and the icy wind that blows inside every time the doors open. He’s about to pull his jacket up over his head and hug his bag to his chest so he can make the dash to his car when Hannibal surprises him by sweeping in with the next gust.

“Good evening, Will,” he greets. His umbrella is the color of rust and its handle has kanji carved into the bottom. Will wasn’t aware umbrellas could look expensive.

“Evening,” he says gruffly. He knows what he sounds like but he hasn’t eaten in twenty hours and he can’t scrape up any more civility. “Jack call you in?” If his voice is bitter when he says Crawford’s name, it’s the seven coffees he’s splashed on his empty stomach while laboring through the bulk of a cold file Jack told him to revisit.

“He requested my analysis,” Hannibal confirms. “Are you leaving?”

“Miracle, isn’t it?” Will is blinded by a sudden headache, like a rebuke for being pert. “Sorry. I’ve been here all day. I’m not at my best.” He ignores the fact that his best isn’t much better.

“Understandable,” Hannibal says generously. Then his eyes are on Will and Will feels flayed to the bone by his scrutiny. He doesn’t know what Hannibal is looking for until he says, “Jack hasn’t been kind to you. You’ve been too long without a meal.”

Will wonders what gave him away. He thinks it might be the way he’s swaying in place. “I was going to pick something up on the way home.”

“That’s probably wise,” Hannibal concedes. Will wonders if he knows that he’s broadcasting his disapproval.

“I should get going before the storm gets worse.” The downpour outside has tapered a little but Will can tell by the color of the clouds that the deluge will resurge within the hour. He adds uselessly, “My tires don’t do well in the rain.”

Suddenly Hannibal is at Will’s side. “Allow me,” he says, and gently herds Will to the door by the elbow. His umbrella snaps open above them like the sun at dusk, and he tugs Will closer to him so that its rays cover them both. It banishes the squall as they walk to Will’s car.

Will is almost completely dry when he drops into the driver’s seat. He feels guilt at the damp climbing the shins of Hannibal’s plaid pants. “Thanks,” he says lamely, remembering and immediately dismissing the towel he has balled up in the trunk. It’s covered in dog hair. “You didn’t have to.”

“My pleasure,” Hannibal says unfathomably. He switches gears with enviable seamlessness. “The rain is supposed to last until the weekend,” he mentions. “Please consider stopping by my house tomorrow for a warm meal to ward off the cold.”

Will has only been in Hannibal’s house a handful of times. Each visit was more impressive than the last. “What time?” he asks, though he meant to deliberate a little longer.

“7:00 is ideal. I will see you then.” Hannibal pulls away and the sun goes with him. “Goodbye, Will.”

Will watches until Hannibal disappears into the building before shaking himself and driving out of the parking lot. He stops halfway to home for a burger and fries and blames Hannibal in his mind for how bland they taste.

=

“I should have called before I came,” Will apologizes, shoving his hands into his pockets and tucking himself into the farthest corner of Hannibal’s kitchen. He still feels like he’s in the way.

“It’s no trouble,” Hannibal assures him, sawing holes into the tops of two loaves of sourdough. He spares Will a glance as he excavates the bready insides and leaves the hard shell of the toasted crust. “I was unexpectedly delayed. The fault is not yours.”

The words _can I help with anything_ almost leave Will’s mouth, but he avoids embarrassing himself and bites them back just in time. “This looks…extravagant.”

In addition to the clam chowder Hannibal is pouring into the bread bowls, there are salty fritter cakes stacked and still steaming on a ceramic plate waiting to be taken into the dining room, and a dilled cucumber salad beside them that looks crisp. There is also a purple-skinned ham crowned with pineapple rings slow-cooking in the oven that he suspects Hannibal will pressure him into taking home, and he noticed dessert and what might have been an appetizer in the fridge. It’s not the theatrical multi-course menu he’s heard stories about, but it’s a damn sight more complicated than anything Will would ever bother with.

Hannibal’s face doesn’t change but Will thinks he might be repressing amusement. “I will be done momentarily.”

Will stutters and tries to amend, “That wasn’t—” He winces at his own ineptitude. “Take your time.”

Hannibal wasn’t quite truthful—he spends ten more minutes fussing over the food. The sleeves of his button down are folded with mathematical precision, exposing a calculated amount of forearm to spare the fabric from mishap. It leaves his strong hands and sturdy wrists bare as he artfully dresses their plates. He shed his vest sometime before Will arrived, and with his apron secure around his waist he looks very different than he does sitting across from Will in his office. If his psychiatrist chair is his throne, his kitchen is his court.

Will has never felt underdressed in a kitchen before.

At one point Hannibal bends to take the ham from the oven, and when he turns to set it down his shirt pulls taut across his shoulders. Will can see every muscle in his back. He realizes Hannibal does not have the body of a therapist.

Dinner is pleasant. Will scrounges up some table manners and manages not to offend his host or spill on himself. Hannibal may have laughed at him once or twice behind the stonewall of his unfailing courtesy, but Will doesn’t take it personally.

Hannibal does send him home with the ham, and he helps Will into his jacket before he leaves. Will tucks the big porcelain pot under his right arm and holds the left out helpfully as Hannibal tugs his sleeve on; they rinse and repeat on the other side.

Will could have put it on himself. He says, “Thank you.”

=

Jack calls Will at five in the morning and, in lieu of a greeting, says, “Look alive. We think it's the Ripper.”

Will hasn’t been to a scene in a month. Jack’s had him reworking old leads for the past few weeks; the worst he’s looked at recently are pictures, and the distance and detachment of photographs doesn’t have the same vivid effect, doesn’t hit him between the eyes with the same arrow of intensity.

He gets onsite and is a little overwhelmed.

The victim is a heavyset man with an expensively-concealed receding hairline and efficiently manicured nails. There’s no ID yet but Will looks at him and thinks _banker, accountant, private wealth management_. He’s about a hundred yards into a forest off of an interstate, seated at the stump off of a tree cut down at the knees in preparation for an exit that never got built.

On the stump is a plate, and on the plate is the man’s stomach, pinned there with silver cutlery.

Zeller informs him that the man’s kidneys are missing, and that his severed tongue has been stuffed into his throat. His fingertips have been flayed as well but Will doesn’t dwell on that. His eyes are repeatedly drawn to the gush of the man’s intestines down his posh suit, and he thinks of the cadaver in the morgue and the squirrel in his yard. He trembles.

“Will.” Jack is a giant next to him.

Before Jack can ask the question, Will breathes, “This is different.”

Sometimes when Will reels back time, the pyrotechnics of passion light him up on the inside. Sometimes he tastes the sour-citrus tang of desperation, and sometimes he throbs with the gamma vibrations of giddiness. Every time he rewinds the Ripper, he feels something so close to indifference as to feel nothing at all.

This time, however, is different.

“This is a warning,” he says, but that’s not right. He tries again. “This is a punishment.” That’s better. “A reprimand, a rebuke.” There’s a word written out all over this scene, and it disturbs Will because in all the cumulative years he’s studied and profiled him, the Ripper has always been wordless before. “This man was a _glutton_.”

Jack is frowning. “Gluttony. The Ripper’s punishing a sin?”

Will recoils. It’s nothing so banal—the Ripper has his delusions of godhood but he’s far above something as trite as religious condemnation. “He’s not passing judgment,” Will says, only confident in it after he’s said it. “He’s eliminating waste. Preventing squander.” He pauses, less sure. “Making sure there’s enough to go around.”

“That sounds very vigilante of him,” Jack says. There’s an edge in his voice that makes Will hunch his shoulders.

“It was purely selfish,” Will counters, speaking to the ground. “This was for his own interests.” But that’s not right—not untrue, but not complete. “His own purposes.”

“What are his purposes?” Jack asks with resignation, because that’s been a dead-end question for years.

Will looks hard at the organ on the plate. He sees his dogs clambering for the squirrel, and the cornucopia. He sees the stomach browned and seasoned, considerately cut into morsels. He sees his hand grip the fork and knife.

“I don’t know,” he says, but that’s not right.

=

Will’s cart is filled with the necessities—canned chili, add-water spiced rice, easy-mix cornbread, jerk chicken wings, fruit snacks, and honey buns. He has a 24-pack of water on the rack underneath, and wedged on top of that are two bags of dog food. There’s a new towel, a bundle of plain t-shirts, and some white bread in the child seat. He avoids a collision with a mother of three and pushes his groceries toward the dairy.

He’s passing the deli when he sees the stag.

It’s standing behind the counter, pelt iridescent under the ugly supermarket fluorescents. The barrel of its plumaged chest is level with the display, a glass case full of beefs, bolognas, and salamis in muted pink. Its tines are draped with sausage links and long slabs of meat. The black forelegs are spattered with the blood of the two staff members lying dead across their stations, gored.

Someone rounds the cereal display without looking and bumps him with their cart. Will tears his stare away from the deli. “Sorry,” the girl says shyly—no older than ten, just coasting down the aisle for fun, not malicious.

“It’s alright,” Will croaks. When she’s gone, he looks back at the meats. The stag is still there.

Slowly it begins to kneel, dipping its laden rack in offering.

Will’s eyelashes flutter, terror twisting his belly into cramps. The wheels of his cart squeak as he swings it around and tries, unsuccessfully, to trolley to the check-out without hurrying. He pays with gritted teeth and shaking hands, and then abandons the charade and rushes to his car.

As he’s pulling away he realizes he forgot the milk. He doesn’t go back for it.

=

The orange streaks of the sunset are still draining from the sky when Will mummifies himself in his sheets and shuts his eyes.

The dogs are confused. They mill curiously around his bed, the biggest of them poking their noses at his curls where they stick out from his blankets. He’s taken them out and refilled their bowls, but they can tell that he’s going out of order, that it’s too early for bed.

His stomach growls. He ignores it the way he has for the past week. The last of Hannibal’s ham is still in the fridge—he doesn’t go into the kitchen to reheat it, however, because if he looks at it he’ll have to sprint for the toilet. He barely managed lunch today for the same reason, and only attempted breakfast. He doesn’t intend to deal with dinner at all.

Will dozes for twenty minutes. In that time, he has two almost-dreams, thin as gossamer and hazy with the fog that clouds the space between sleep and consciousness. The first is him wrist-deep in a motor that takes up an implausible amount of his living room. The second is him seated across the stump from the banker, pulling the cutlery from the steaming stomach and lifting a bloody bite to his lips. There’s something awful and endless like an abyss at his back, and from the void a sense of dark approval presses hot to his spine.

He jerks awake, and hunger scrapes at him from the inside.

“Goddamnit,” he grits out, ripping off the sheets. The dogs scramble out of his way as he stalks into the kitchen. The ham sits in its tub, skinny and crownless after days of Will picking at the meat and eating all the pineapple.

He doesn’t bother heating it up—he stands in the open door of the fridge pinching off pieces and wolfing them down cold, fingers smeared with congealed grease. To his fury, it’s delicious.

=

Class is a small eternity. Will yawns twice in the middle of his lecture, a presentation on a lakeside killer from a Chicago suburb who dumped pieces of his victims off his dock. Fatigue knocks down Will’s mental forts, leaves him open and malleable—he looks at pictures of agents salvaging bloated and waterlogged limbs and sees himself amputating them days before, sees himself biting chunks out of legs and arms and spitting them off the pier. He gets a headache halfway through but keeps his pills in his pocket until the students leave.

He’s disappointed by the fact that he’s disappointed that Alana isn’t loitering around today. He turns his back to the door and starts stuffing his things into his bag, tucking a few early papers from his more ambitious students in between his books so they don’t wrinkle. He won’t read them tonight—he doesn’t bring work home if it doesn’t come from Jack—but he might pass tomorrow morning in his diner and look at them there.

The projector is still on. A snapshot of a body from the waist down spans the wall, its mutilated phallus dangling between thighs missing large, crooked bites. Will keeps his eyes down as he unplugs his computer and turns it off. He bends down to stow it.

“This is deliberate.”

Will startles; he hits his head on his desk as he snaps upright. Standing across from him is a student—the student from before, the big one. Will only recognizes him because of his height. “Excuse me?”

The student glowers at him. “I haven’t gotten above a C in your class.” He points at Will with one large hand and Will’s chin drops to his chest. “You failed my last paper. You're doing it on purpose.”

Will isn’t. “I’m not,” he says simply, aware that his hunched posture makes him look guilty anyway. “Your work is subpar. I grade it like it is.” The student is livid but Will fixes his gaze over his shoulder and continues bluntly, “Start collaborating with your peers, or get a tutor. I don’t give scores that aren’t earned.”

At the edge of Will’s vision the student flushes mottled pink. “You’re biased,” he accuses. His mountainous shoulders come up and his hands clench, veins rising like flooded rivers in his throat and forearms. He tenses his entire body, the way animals bristle to make themselves look bigger than they are.

Suddenly the tension in Will’s belly dissipates, and he can lift his chin. He regards the student as coolly as he can as he advises, “Take that up with the department head.” He turns around and finishes packing his bag by way of dismissal.

There’s a moment when he thinks the student will start shouting. Instead, footsteps like earthquakes stomp all the way to the door.

Will tries very hard not to feel vindicated. He doesn’t succeed.

=

Instead of going to Quantico after they re-process a cleared scene out in Dundalk, Beverly treats Will to lunch.

She takes him to a bed-and-breakfast after they pass D.C. The owners greet her by name and fuss over her in a lightning-quick storm of Korean and English; Beverly shields him from the brunt of their attention and gets them a floral print table by the bay windows of a former sitting room. She orders from memory and boldly asks for their hosts to bring them the entire coffee pot, and only when she and Will are hunched over the warmth of two fat mugs does her smile wilt.

Will doesn’t want to be there but he says nothing. Beverly hadn’t given him the easy space and freedom of choice she usually does when she gamely absorbs his social incompetence and tries to include him. He thinks something is up. He thinks he should ask.

“Can I have the sugar?” he blurts.

Beverly dumps two spoonfuls in her coffee before she hands it over. “I thought you took it black.”

Will winces at himself. “I do.”

Beverly’s smile revives a little. “Don’t strain yourself, cowboy.” Will feels immediately better.

Their food comes. Will eats a garden omelet. Beverly digs into a tower of pancakes and tucks away two other pastries, and sneaks strips off of the almond croissant that Will tried and didn’t finish. Will watches her eat with the determination of a salmon wriggling upstream and accidentally gets bowled over with secondhand comfort.

He finally finds the gumption to ask, “Are you okay?”

Beverly doesn’t waste their time by prevaricating. “I am now,” she says. “I needed that.”

Beverly deserves more than empathetic intrusion. Will plays twenty questions. “Is it work?”

“No more than usual,” she shrugs, and then, because she isn’t particularly reticent, “Got pretty hammered this weekend. The short version is I now remember why I don’t do dudes anymore.”

Will has to try very hard not to feel humid drunk breath on his neck or careless hands on his waist. He absolutely doesn’t know what to say to that, so he keeps quiet.

“No harm done,” she assures him. “Just some embarrassing regret. I think,” she muses around a bite of croissant, “I’ll stick to the other side of rough.”

Will’s not an innocent by any definition. He still flushes. “That’s, uh, good.”

Her grin is wicked, and exponentially more genuine than before. Will doesn’t begrudge her the amusement at his expense. “What side of rough do you prefer, Will Graham?”

Will can’t say he didn’t anticipate the question. “I wouldn’t know.” Beverly’s eyebrows go up and he amends quickly, “No, I mean, I _know_. I just—I try to stay away from…rough.” He stares into the last dredges of his coffee.

Somewhere in an adequate explanation of that are the words _I don’t trust myself with rough_. Beverly is astute enough not to make him say it. Instead she refills his mug, pins him with a merciless smirk, and steers them clear of that landmine with a roguish, “I bet you like your women on top.”

Will’s head feels heavy from all the blood in his face. He doesn’t have to confirm it; he gives himself away.  

Beverly waits a beat, and then very casually asks, “Ever ask one of them to try rough?”

Will has never talked sex over embroidered rosebud napkins before. “Once,” he admits, sipping his coffee. It scalds him. He presses the static numbness of his burnt tongue against the roof of his mouth before he confesses, “It was…underwhelming.”

Beverly looks at him critically. For once he feels like someone else is looking at the slope of his shoulders, the flicker of his eyes, the set of his mouth, and reconstructing the inside of his mind. Eventually she licks the powdered sugar and wafer flakes off of her fingers and suggests, “Maybe next time ask a guy.”

Will takes a big gulp this time and tries to pretend she’s not laughing at him over the rim of her mug.

=

Will halts his slow circuit around the mezzanine in Hannibal’s office, pausing to look at a mask in one of the cubbies of the wrap-around bookcase. He used to walk home from school with a boy named Keylor whose family was from the other end of the Gulf, and sometimes when Will’s dad couldn’t afford groceries he would send Will over to accept the dinner invitation he otherwise declined. He recognizes the mask as similar to the Mesoamerican relics the boy’s family brought with them.

“This is pre-Columbian,” Will says. The base of the mask is black stone, and it’s covered in a mosaic of subvitreous turquoise and fractured coral. Its eyes are closed and its mouth is wide open, and its ears are distended by large spools. The snake carved into it is threaded with pyrite.

“That’s correct,” Hannibal replies after a moment. Will can tell that he’s surprised. “It was among the artifacts found during the major excavations of the ruins of Tenochtitlan. It is likely a fraction of the tribute sent to the Aztec capital from Oaxaca.”

Will is hyperaware of the doctor’s eyes on his back. _How much did you drop for it_ is the thought that blitzes through his mind, but it’s too rude to speak aloud. “It’s stunning.” It is. It makes Will nostalgic.

“A masterpiece,” Hannibal agrees, moving to stand at the bottom of the balcony’s ladder. He reaches up. “Will you come down?”

The gesture pulls the arm of his suit jacket so that his bicep is emphasized. Will comes down. He thinks about just using the railing but ends up accepting Hannibal’s hand and letting himself be guided back to the ground, following Hannibal as he leads them back to their usual seats. Unbidden, the memory of the morning at the bed-and-breakfast resurfaces in his mind.

For twenty seconds Will pretends Beverly never said anything. He stares hard at the display case of ancient coins on the far wall: one bronze hemidrachm from Ptolemaic Egypt bearing the likeness of Cleopatra VII, one bronze shekel from Carthage embossed with the head of Tanit, a silver denarius with an obverse helmeted Roma and a reverse galloping Dioscuri, a golden Byzantine solidus with the bust of Christ, a silver obol from Samaria, two bronze prutot from the reign of Herod in Judea, a pan liang coin of copper alloy from the Han dynasty, and a gold Kushan dinar of Athsho issued by Kanishka I. In the corner of his eye, he can see Hannibal looking at him with patience.

At length Will submits to his curiosity.

He shifts his stare to Hannibal, remembering the musculature that he glimpsed before and comparing it with what he can see through the suit. He concedes that Hannibal has the physique for…for roughness.

“Did you finish the ham, Will?” Hannibal prods, breaking the silence.

Will thinks back squatting on his kitchen floor and stuffing his face with cold strings of meat and fat. He closes his eyes. “Yes. It was great. Thank you.”

He wonders if Hannibal’s placidity would ever yield far enough to accommodate anything other than a sedate missionary pace and position. He berates himself for the thought.

“Your color is much improved,” Hannibal observes, “and I dare to say you look less thin.”

Will wouldn’t be surprised. Hannibal’s food is made for gorging. Between his age, the alcohol, and the charity meals, Will suspects he isn’t far off from sporting a gut. “Flattery will get you nowhere,” he says dryly.

Hannibal offers him a sliver of a smile. “I am pleased you accepted my gift. That was very good of you.”

Will confuses himself by preening.

=

The dusk has purpled into an evening the color of plum skin. Will sits on the porch in a sweater that hangs below his knuckles, a pair of boxer-briefs that are frayed at the crotch, birthday gag joke socks with tiny cats printed on them, and a thick quilt wrapped around his lower half to keep the chill off of his bare legs. He’s sipping a beer instead of his usual whiskey and flipping through a Cabela catalogue of outdoor gear, rubbing the waxy pages between his fingers. The dogs are piled on the other side of the deck. It’s quiet.

He idly considers buying some camping gear and treating his dogs to a little vacation. He won’t be able to use the gear until the weather gets warm, but that might get him a better, off-season deal. He wonders if the dogs will like some time away from the house, if they’ll like a night or two in the depths of the forest. He wonders if a camping trip will make the sleepwalking better or worse.

The quiet is shattered by Winston’s growl.

Will’s hand tightens on the neck of his bottle—Winston never growls. He’s crouching at the very edge of the porch stairs on legs ready to spring forward, ears flat, fur raised, and lips pulled back to bare his teeth. Alarmed, Will follows the arrow of Winston’s defensive stance with his eyes and peers into the darkness of his yard.

The bloody dog peers back at him.

It’s sitting just outside the ring of yellow light thrown off by Will’s porch lamp, looking much the same as Will remembers: diseased pelt, emaciated body, and blank, blank eyes. Its muzzle is no longer dripping red, so Will assumes it must have been drinking from the puddles left in the odd potholes of Wolf Trap’s roads from the day’s rain. It barely acknowledges Winston’s increasingly hostile snarls; mostly it just looks at Will.

Will is transfixed. His dogs are soulful creatures—they’re animated, they’re lively, they project things like boundless happiness and dumb excitement and lethal trust. The bloody dog projects nothing. Instead its empty eyes absorb the porch light and the dogs where they raise their heads and Will.

It licks its chops.

Will jerks into motion. He whistles and tells the dogs _up,_ extricating himself from the blanket so he can toss open the front door and usher them inside. Winston goes last, sad eyes boring into the darkness of the yard. Will gathers up his magazine and afghan and follows, latching the door behind himself.

He relocates to the chair by the fireplace where the embers of his dinner fire are still smoldering. He gets through another ten pages of three-compartment tents before he gets up again.

He looks out the window. The bloody dog is gone.

=

The SUV seems illogically cramped, and it’s because Price and Zeller have no concept of volume when they get into their verbal scraps. Price is in the back with Will and Zeller has to turn around in the passenger’s seat but their relentless back-and-off barely suffers for it. Will presses his face against the car window and watches his breath plume on the glass. Beverly must notice him trying to melt into the door because she puts some easy listening on the radio and turns it up until Price and Zeller pocket their argument for another time.

They stop right before Occoquan, where the regional park meets the river. Will has been there before—soon after he got his teaching position he visited the town to look at the Mill House Museum, take the ghost tour, and spend a night avoiding conversation in a pub. He’s glad the body isn’t in town—the population is small enough that they would have been swarmed.

The walk through the forest is almost pleasant; it’s early afternoon and the sunlight slants through boughs of sassafras, scotch pine, and sweet gum. There’s a throng of police officers and federal agents in a glade, and Will can pick out Jack among them like a mountain among foothills. He turns his head almost preternaturally as Will approaches and sights him through the small crowd, hawk-like.

“Will,” he greets, and steps forward. Will is surprised to see Hannibal right behind him.

“Hello, Will,” he offers.

Without thinking, Will says, “Hello, Dr. Lecter.”

“It’s this way,” Jack says tersely. He walks off, and Will puts his head down and follows.

The victim is a white male with dark hair and stubble approaching a beard. His curls are tousled from the struggle with his killer and matted in the back; on the rock beneath his head is a puddle of blood and scrambled brains. His eyes are filmy and his lips are pale from the cold, but his throat is vibrant with color.

Zeller does a quick initial analysis and then reports. “I’m not sure whether COD is the smashed skull or the strangulation.” He indicates the bruising around the neck.

“It was the strangulation,” Will murmurs, eyes on the man’s face.

“Everybody back,” Jack demands, and the officers and the agents retreat.

Will closes his eyes. The pendulum gains momentum. He sees the man traipsing through the woods, coming to a halt at the break of trees with the river in earshot. He gropes for the cigarette pack hidden in his pocket—Will can see the cold butt in the blood—because his wife doesn’t know he still buys them. He thumbs his lighter, and the flame blinds him to the big hands coming up to crush his windpipe.

But something is wrong. Instead of reaching for the man’s neck Will is thrashing against the grip on his throat, struggling against the immense strength bearing him down to the ground, kicking his legs uselessly, groping futilely with one hand for something to fight back with. He can feel, peripherally, the rage that travels down his arms to the man choking under his hands, but much stronger is the panic making his heart pulsate as his lungs start to burn for air. He weakens, and the big shadow braced over him with a knee on his brittle ribs wrings him tighter. Eventually he starts to die, and as he slips away the shadow screams at his twitching body and slams him on the rock, again and again and again.

Will opens his eyes. He sees the body once more, limbs akimbo and clothing ruffled, short nails encrusted with blood from scrabbling against the ground. There’s not much to read here—just anger, hot and wild and primal. The killer murdered the victim and brutalized his corpse and left him in the sprawl he died in. Will’s body breaks out in shudders. The scene is vicious and crude and, in that moment, the most terrifying thing he has ever seen.

“Will!” he hears Beverly call as he stumbles to the side.

His blood rushes in his ears and he’s briefly deaf to anything else. He’s on the verge of hyperventilation, he realizes. He tears open his jacket to clutch at the front of his shirt, trying to gulp down breaths.

Within moments he feels a hand come down on the base of his skull, palm warm and dry as it pushes him to bend over. He automatically braces his hands on his knees, head down. The smell of tasteful cologne fills his nose.

“Breathe, Will,” Hannibal orders over the thunder of his pulse. He massages the back of Will’s neck, squeezing rhythmically. Will gasps obediently.

It’s over soon—within a minute Will is able to drag in air through his nose and exhale it normally. Hannibal transfers his grip to Will’s shoulder and helps him straighten, and Will sees that Beverly is at his other side, looking at him with grim relief. Her eyes alight on Hannibal’s hold on him right before Jack strides over to him, and then they both step back to make room.

“What was that?” Jack asks, and his concern shows in his curtness.

Will wonders what would happen if he told Jack the truth—that he just empathized with a corpse laid out like so much trash, left for the rain and animals, and the thought that sent him into a fit was _it’s so sloppy_.

“I wasn’t ready,” he says hoarsely.

Jack frowns. Will doesn’t blame him; they’ve seen things a hundred times worse than a skull cracked like an egg and a body barely scratched. He wouldn’t buy it either. Jack lets it go, however, and asks, “Did you get anything?”

Will shivers and re-zips his coat. “Nothing someone else will miss.”

Jack sighs and passes a hand down his face. “I need you to look again.”

To Will’s surprise, Hannibal steps forward. “That would be unwise. Will has just suffered significant physiological distress. To expose him to the same trigger a second time would be unwise.”

Jack bristles. “If there was another way, doctor, I would take it. But we need Will to do his job, and that’s what he’ll have to do.”

Will and Beverly duck a little, but Hannibal doesn’t outwardly react. Will can almost see his response forming—something polite and, if the serene look on his face is anything to go by, utterly cutting. Will feels ignored. He feels bisected.

“I’ll look,” he mumbles, eyes on the ground. Jack and Hannibal both turn to him.

Beverly puts a hand on his arm. “You sure?” Will nods.

“Go ahead,” Jack says, with a gentleness that comes from the sensation of victory. Hannibal nods and acquiesces with almost divine grace.

Looking a second time is just as bad, but Will bites down on the fear that rises like bile in the back of his throat and throws something together. “The killer is furious. The violence was minimal—most likely the victim is a scapegoat, a stand-in, and not the focus of the rage.” Will grabs his forehead and tries to will his burgeoning headache away. “It’s all…muddled. I can’t get anything else.”

Jack looks far from contented, but Hannibal has already spoken once. “Alright. Take a break.” It’s the furthest he’ll bend.

Will doesn’t look at anybody but Beverly as he goes back to the SUV.

=

It’s late when Will gets back to Wolf Trap that night. The dogs dash outside to relieve themselves; nobody but Winston pauses long enough to welcome him home. They come back inside early, however, too tired for a long romp, and press cold noses to Will’s outstretched hands before circling their beds.

Will feels bad. They were cooped up all day. He’s struck by how wrong it feels to see them sluggish and keeping to the porch. He regrets letting Jack talk him into coming back to the Bureau to compare the Occoquan body to the one they found in Reston two weeks ago. As an apology he goes around the room and gathers each of the mutts in his arms; they’re sleepy and pliant and accept his hugs. Buster licks him back and Dakota burrows her face in the curve of his armpit.

There’s a huge pile of ash and charred bark in the hearth. Will sweeps it into two paper bags and builds a new fire before washing his hands of the soot and stripping down to his night clothes. His whiskey stash is dwindling but he pours himself more fingers than he should and takes it right to bed.

Winston jumps up on the mattress and settles in his lap, and his shaggy warmth acts like a balm. Will buries a hand in his fur and tries to relax. Amazingly, he begins to drift off.

He jerks awake to a sudden thunder of barking, spilling his whiskey down his front. He turns in time to see Gizmo chase Toast out of his cushion, nipping his tail when he scurries too slowly.

Will is wet and tired. He whistles sharply and all the dogs cringe. “Settle down,” he hisses.

He tosses his drink onto his bedside table and rolls over into his sheets, wet shirt and all, Winston resettling behind him. He doesn’t know if he can recapture the doze, but he does know he doesn’t want to be awake.

Winston’s tail wraps around Will’s thigh, and suddenly it’s easier to close his eyes and swallow past the sensation of hands on his throat.

=

Will trails Hannibal into his office and is surprised when, instead of letting him pace the office as per usual, Hannibal directs him to his chair. He understands immediately that he is in trouble.

“How are you, Will?” Hannibal asks, putting his hands in his pockets. He does not take his seat.

“Fine,” Will says, directing his reply mostly to the carpet.

“Good to hear.” Hannibal takes a few steps closer until the tips of his polished shoes enter Will’s vision. “No lasting trauma from the episode at Occoquan then?”

Will understands what this is about. “No,” he lies, and it is the exact wrong thing to do.

“If you will not do me the honor of taking my medical advice, please do me the favor of sparing me untruths.” Hannibal barely sounds peeved. His voice is totally composed. “Have you dreamed?”

Will tells the truth this time. “Nightly.”

“There’s no reason you should try to keep these things from me, Will,” Hannibal reprimands him, rebukes him. “As there was no reason for you to let yourself be pressured into doing what harms you.”

Will tucks his chin to his chest. “Jack would have turned it into a fight.”

“I am glad to fight for you,” Hannibal rejoins. “You are my friend.”

Will doesn’t have a ready response. “I had a job to do.”

“Will.” Hannibal waits until Will risks a glance upward. “Jack believes you are a tireless machine. You can’t afford to share in his delusion. The toll your job takes on you is massive, and you must respect the gravity of that burden by acknowledging when it is too heavy to bear.” He lowers his head—like a lion, Will remembers—but Will evades his gaze this time.

“But I have to bear it,” he mutters.

“You feel compelled to bear it,” Hannibal corrects him. “There is a difference. You must accept this, or Jack will continue to exploit the fact that you insist on denying it.”

Will shakes his head. “There’s no difference when people’s lives on are the line.”

His attention is arrested by Hannibal’s sigh. “You encourage the abuse visited upon you.” Hannibal pauses, and Will’s breath catches. “I’m disappointed that you refuse to protect yourself.”

Will flinches.

Hannibal steps back in a rustle of foreign fabric. He finally sits. “I simply want the best for you, Will,” he says. “I wish you wanted the best for you too.”

Bizarrely, Will says, “Thanks.”

For the first time since the conversation began, Hannibal emotes. He seems pleased. “You’re welcome. Always.”

“I don’t know,” Will starts to admit, and has to force the rest out. “I don’t know how to protect myself.”

“I can help you learn,” Hannibal promises. “As a start, I believe you should allow yourself a diversion from work.” It’s not advice; it’s non-negotiable. “You are welcome to accompany me to the art show being held at the end of the month.”

Will isn’t interested in art outside of the thrift store paintings hanging in his house. “I’ll go,” he agrees quietly, eyes still on the rug. He meant to deliberate a little longer.

=

Will dreams. He finds himself in an approximation of Hannibal’s dining room that stretches into infinity at either end of the table. He sits at the right of the head, and across from him Garrett Jacob Hobbs is bleeding from his eyes, his nose, his mouth, and Will’s bullet holes. Between them is a single plate; Will knows exactly what’s on it. There’s something sitting at his left and its presence leeches the light from the room, but he doesn’t turn to look.

Hobbs grins at him and tells him, teeth red, “ _Taste and see_.”

Will wakes up cold with sweat to Winston barking at the front door. Residual terror makes him lamb-weak as he stumbles out of bed, and he falls once on the way to flick on the porch light. The sky is black as pitch and the lamp on the deck scythes an orange semi-circle in the darkness; Will thinks it might be just before 4:00.

He looks outside just in time to see the bloody dog scamper off into the shadow.

His hand tightens on the doorknob. He sucks in several deep breaths to get his heart rate down and tries to disentangle his mind from the sticky threads of fear that sleep always weaves around him. Eventually he gathers the grit to open the door, and by that time his pack is standing alert at his back.

There’s a mangled animal on his doormat.

He doesn’t react fast enough this time either. His dogs bowl him over as they rush past him to scent it, and within seconds they’re tracking blood across the porch and smearing it tacky and cold across his jaw where they jump on him to lick at his petrified face.

Will forgets all of their commands. He yells at them and his voice cracks, and they hunker down against the wood slats, whining. Dakota’s tail drops between her legs. Winston tries to nose at his bare ankle, muzzle dry, but Will shrinks back, fists clenched.

He drags the iron tub outside and fills it with lukewarm water and scrubs all of the dogs with more force than he intends. He’s irritated to feel tears pricking the backs of his eyes. When he’s done the dogs sit shivering on the deck; he instantly feels regret, but he keeps dropping the towel when he tries to dry them off. They end up going back inside and curling up on each other. Will scours the porch until the sky lightens and his hands are dry and cracked, body cramped from the cold—until the red paw prints are long gone.

He abandons the thought of going back to bed and gets ready instead. In the shower, the hot water on his ice flesh feels like needles sticking him all over. Before he leaves he puts down treats in front of his dogs’ bowls, and they forgive him.

He buys breakfast for himself on the drive to the Academy but ends up throwing it away. He gets there early and sits in his classroom for hours and tries not to think about what animal the bloody dog left him.

=

Beverly texts Will and tells him Jack wants him to sit in on some fiber analysis. It’s not his case but, inspired, Will called Jack in the middle of last night and proposed that the jacket on the body found in the backyard pool of an attorney bachelorette wasn’t the victim’s, and they’ve retrieved it from storage to comb through for anything they overlooked. Although Will doesn’t remember giving Beverly his number, he’s not upset. She also begs him to bring espresso.

He’s there within the hour with two steaming, aromatic cups from the drive-thru in the parking lot by the hardware store. He guesses they can smell him coming down the hall because Beverly pokes her head out the lab door and crows, and the faint sound of Price mocking her with a sing-song _Hallelujah!_ reaches him a second later in clear tenor.

Will hasn’t yet sipped from his coffee; his mind is fogged with the exhaustion of six hours of sleep stretched over three days. He trips coming in the door.

Zeller is on his way out. He reaches out automatically to stop Will’s fall, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him upright with a startled, “Whoa!” He doesn’t let go of Will until he’s steady on his feet. “Mind the gap.”

Will is still clutching the espressos, no harm done. “Sorry. Thanks.”

When Price sees that he’s fine, he clucks his tongue and finishes snapping on some gloves. Beverly looks critically at the bags under his eyes, but she skips the sermon and says, “That was your life on the line, Graham. Be glad you didn’t spill.”

“I’m glad,” he promises dryly.

Price assists Beverly with the analysis while Will observes. They find a particle in the crease of the water-damaged jacket cuff and determine it to be cat litter. Will was right; it’s not the victim’s. Price congratulates them archly and then leaves to find Zeller, and when they’re alone Beverly turns to Will.

“You know,” she says, and he figures it’s going to be bad. “I didn’t mean literally throw yourself at a man.”

Will stutters, highly disgruntled.

Beverly chuckles. “Kidding. Don’t worry—I know you wouldn’t go for Zeller.” With that mysterious assurance, she starts putting away equipment and preparing the jacket to be resealed. Will isn’t confident in his shaking hands so he stays in his corner, but he does pour some of his espresso into Beverly’s cup when she’s not looking.

If Will has ever been attracted to a man, he can’t remember it. Still, Beverly’s words stick in his craw. Two minutes pass before Will sighs, “What do you mean, I wouldn’t go for Zeller?”

Beverly looks very smug. “He’s not your type,” she shrugs. “I mean, besides the wrong parts.”

Will doesn’t know what that means. “What does that mean?”

“I hear Zeller’s pretty vanilla,” she informs him baldly. “And that doesn’t exactly fit your criteria.”

Will almost dreads asking. “What are my criteria?”

She winks. “You’re gonna need someone that can get a little…uncivilized.”

Will’s mouth is dry. He knocks back the rest of his coffee like a shot.

=

Will pauses with his hand on the faucet of his tub, reconsidering getting out of the shower. The pipes have finally thawed; the water is just now running hot enough to steam up the mirror over the sink. He’s already finished soaping his body and rinsing his hair—by now he’s usually stepping into a towel and avoiding his reflection, but tonight he lingers. For the first time since the Ripper scene, he has the beginnings of an erection.

He considers it, water beating the crown of his head and tops of his shoulders, and then reaches down and improves it with his hand. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries his very best to empty his mind. He knows from experience that if he lets himself think he’ll go soft, so he pictures a blank wall and works his arm purposefully.

He can’t get more than half hard. He brings his other hand down to help, to no avail. He strokes determinedly for another minute before cursing Beverly and reaching for the soap.

It takes him a while to work up the nerve to follow through with his resolve. He lathers his hands over and over until he feels brave enough to continue, and then slowly reaches between his legs to clean where he skimmed before.

He gets dizzy from how fast the blood rushes to his cock.

He slaps the faucet off and steps onto his bathmat, toweling off sloppily and padding into the little-used upstairs bedroom. The only furniture in there is a cheap double bed, squeakier than the frame he sleeps on downstairs, and he lays his towel on the bare mattress before he settles down. For a moment he’s frightened of his intentions and lies there frozen on his back—then he remembers he doesn’t have the supplies to go all the way and the thought relieves the pressure.

Very tentatively he begins to explore.

He fists himself with one hand to stay stiff, not sure if he’ll end up scared flaccid, and spreads his thighs as wide as they’ll comfortably go. He brings his other hand down to the place where he opens and circles with a finger—and whimpers. His cock blots his palm with slick. Not flaccid, then.

He spends several minutes that way, pumping with his right hand and rubbing with his left, breath whistling through his nose as he clamps his lips down on the noises rising in the back of his throat.

He waits to peak. He can feel it aching in the cradle of his hips—he’s dripping down his wrist—but for some reason the peak doesn’t come.

He wavers indecisively for a moment, chest heaving and forearms burning, before he concedes defeat. He doesn’t really know where to start, so he conjures up something generic—broad chest, brawny shoulders, strong hands with sturdy wrists. He experiments, imagines being held down tight.

His vision whites out.

When he can see again he finds himself striped to his chest with ropes of semen, legs trembling, his curly fringe plastered to his forehead with sweat. His body is humming with the last few volts of his release, limbs twitching once, twice before going limp on his damp towel.

Only then does he notice the baying at the door. He waits until the phantom hands retreat before getting up.

=

Will arrives for his appointment only half in his own mind.

He’d driven there directly from a day-long door-to-door in Occoquan. The last interviewee was a street neighbor of the victim in the woods—a small platinum blonde woman with one arm missing from the elbow down and the other encased in a sleeve tattoo mural of Alphonse Mucha’s _Seasons_. She kept her gaze lowered the entire time Will spoke to her, emphasizing the wingtips of her eyeliner. He’s thinking of her vintage tea dress and how she unintentionally called him _sir_ when Hannibal opens the waiting room door.

“Good evening, Will,” he greets, inviting him in.

Will fixes his posture as he crosses the threshold. “Evening.”

He’s allowed to pace this time. He walks the perimeter of the room even though he’s seen everything in Hannibal’s office before. Hannibal sits at his desk to observe him.

“I understand you were occupied with the investigation today,” he says, organizing his papers and retrieving a pen. He jots down unrelated notes to let Will answer at his leisure.

“Yes,” Will says. Instead of his usual habit of dragging his fingers along Hannibal’s things—an Arabic copy of the _Rihla_ manuscript of Ibn Battuta’s world travels, a Parisian astrolabe of medieval design, a to-scale mounted replica of the Angkor Wat in Cambodia—he clasps his hands together and keeps them at his belt. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he confesses.

Hannibal switches lanes obligingly. “How are your dreams?”

Will stops in front of a reproduction amphora depicting Heracles’ twelfth labor. The stark black body of the hellhound Cerberus is a visual shock against the vase’s blood orange patina. He stares at the various shades of the dog’s three heads for a long time before he answers. “Different.” He debates on whether or not to mention the waking dreams.

The deliberate scuff of a heel against the carpet alerts Will to Hannibal’s sudden presence at his side. Automatically Will’s hands re-fold at the small of his back; without thinking he tilts his head up until the stubble-shadowed line of his neck is unobstructed.

Hannibal pauses, and then says, “Better, I hope.”

Will thinks of sitting at Hannibal’s infinite table and astounds himself with a quiet, “Yes.”

He glances up for a split second and makes accidental eye contact. He’d noticed a long time ago that the doctor’s eyes are a strange, disquieting maroon. Usually they’re matte and impenetrable, but right now Will looks through them like stained glass and sees a darkness that isn’t very civilized at all.

“Good,” Hannibal says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I knew a damn thing about FBI procedure and Academy teaching, but I don't. Suspension of disbelief will get you through the worst of my mistakes.
> 
> The line about "improving it with his hand" is from Harris' Red Dragon.


	2. And I Am The Moon

Dr. Orozco can be very persuasive when she wants to be, so Will comes home late from guest-teaching for her class, an evening lecture on the role of genetics and social environment in criminal behavior. He bails himself out of the noose of his tie on the drive to his house, ringed with sweat from cinching his neck all day, and shrugs out of his coat at a stop sign, autumnal chill be damned.

He’s not halfway down his driveway when he sees something is wrong.

Winston starts trotting alongside the car as he pulls up, which tells him he forgot to close the back door and Angus nudged the latch on the screen. Unsupervised, it looks like the pack followed his lead and fanned out to frolic through the crisp dead grass in his yard. He prepares a stern talking-to in his mind as he parks, but his fingers slip off of his keys when he tries to kill the engine.

In the middle of the yard the bloody dog is mounting Dakota.

Rusty and Gizmo are growling on the porch; Winston is scrabbling at his car door. Panicked, Will brings his hand down on his wheel and honks the horn, startling his pack. The bloody dog leaps up and retreats, snarling, behind the tree. Will stumbles out of his oven of a Volkswagen into the bitter air, pointing at his door and hissing _inside_. Most of the dogs dash into the house at his voice.

He has to drag Dakota. She crouches low to the ground and tries to duck away from his hand. When he finally manages to thread his fingers through her collar, she resists him by digging her claws into the cold-hardened ground. He’s forced to pick her up and carry her.

Will kicks the door shut behind himself and a second later the bloody dog launches itself against it. The wood shudders in its frame. Will startles and almost drops Dakota; she wiggles out of his grip anyway and disappears down the hall.

Outside, the bloody dog howls.

Will’s skin crawls. He’s never heard a dog sound like that.

He shuts Dakota in the kitchen again and ignores the shriek of her nails scrabbling against the doorknob—she’s the only one out of the pack to have figured out the role of the knob. The front door groans a few more times. Will stands in his living room, trembling, until it stops.

The bloody dog doesn’t make another sound.

Ears pointed up, Angus jumps into one of the chairs to look out the window, the weight of his bulk almost rocking it backward. Buster sniffs at the threshold while Gizmo and Toast try to burrow further under Rusty. Dakota whines in the kitchen. Winston shoves his head under Will’s dangling hand until it stops shaking, and then walks him to the door.

Will opens it. The bloody dog is gone.

Will gets the iron tub out again and sets it up in the kitchen, closing him and Dakota in alone. Though she doesn’t try to bite him, she rumbles low in her throat as he eases her collar off. He has to wrestle her into the water. It turns pink immediately—filth and gore from the bloody dog’s underbelly mats the fur on her back.

It takes a long time before she lets him wash the blood off the back of her neck.

=

“I come bearing gifts,” Alana announces as she walks into Will’s classroom. Will looks up from connecting his laptop to the projector. She’s juggling coffee, a pair of fruit bowls, and a brown paper bag which turns out to be two plump, flaky croissants that leave a mess on his desk when she pulls them out. He doesn’t mind—he gives her his chair and drags a stool over for himself.

They eat in the twenty minutes that Will has until the students start trickling in. Will finishes his croissant and picks at his fruit, and lets Alana scold him for it. It’s comfortable.

He observes her over the lid of his coffee while she roots through her purse for some napkins. He notices that she’s just slightly disheveled—her clothes are wrinkled from what he guesses to be a night on a floor and she’s wearing flats instead of her usual pumps. When he throws his cup away he can smell something like tree bark on her, and a different deodorant.

It’s too easy to retrace in his mind—her shivering in the dark morning, laughing as she’s pinned to the tree she parked beside for a long last kiss, closure to a clandestine night.

“Thank you,” he tells her when the breakfast is gone. “You have a twig in your hair.”

“Oh.” She pats her head, trying to feel it. Her blush confirms everything.

“I’ll get it.” He leans over and raises a hand, waiting for her permission.

“Thanks.” She tilts her head helpfully.

Will frowns as he gently extracts it.

=

Will stops at the gas station in the supermarket parking lot to refuel. Sometimes he still gets thrown off when no staff member appears at his window to drawl _how much, mister?_ and fill up his tank for him. He has to re-teach himself how to work the automated pump even though he did it two weeks ago, and remind himself that Tuscaloosa is a long time past.

Beverly calls as he’s paying.

“Graham,” he answers without looking, shoulder pressing his phone to his ear so he can pull out his card.

“Got any plans for the weekend, champ?” she asks without prelude.

Will thinks he remembers her mentioning a doctor’s appointment earlier in the week. If he concentrates, he can imagine her sitting in the waiting room, annoyed with the waxy fake plants and novella re-runs playing on the TV in the ceiling corner, twiddling her thumbs until the tedium gets the best of her and she pulls out her cell on impulse.

It’s small talk; he was probably the first name she saw in her call log. He hesitates—he doesn’t know why. “I’m going to an art show.”

She makes a noise of surprise. “I didn’t know you were into that.”

“Not exactly,” Will hedges, and then, because Beverly’s next step will be to demand context anyway, adds, “Dr. Lecter invited me.”

He can tell he has the entirety of her attention. “I see.”

“He thinks I need a distraction,” he clarifies, feeling his neck heat up under his collar.

Beverly mutters, in a way that he can tell is reflexive, “I bet he does.” She continues as though she hadn’t spoken, “What are you wearing?”

Will stalls. “Uh.”

“Will,” she says. “Tell me you’re not going to embarrass Lecter with some thrice-rented senior prom monkey suit.”

Will remembers the old tuxedo languishing in the depths of his neglected bedroom closet. “I am not going to embarrass Lecter with a thrice-rented monkey suit.” He hasn’t exactly lied but he thinks she can smell his deception anyway.

“If you’re gonna pretend to be civilized,” she says, and he fumbles his wallet, “you should at least shave.”

=

Before he leaves his car Will spends several minutes vigorously rolling the dog hair off of his pants. They’re a little tight—he bought this tux a few years ago for a singularly unexciting awards ceremony at the Academy that he left early from, and he’s filled out a little since then. Aside from some loose threads in the shawl collar it hadn’t needed much patching up, so he wore it as it was. He can tell Toast has been sneaking into the closet to chew on his old shoes by the quantity of fur at the hem; he’ll have to think of an appropriate sentence. He goes through three sticky sheets before he deems himself presentable, and then gives his jacket the same treatment for good measure.

He’s something like fashionably late when he walks into the Hotel Monaco.

Immediately he feels like he has no business being there. There are few people milling around the long lobby, mostly travelers trailing luggage better kempt than his clothes, but the entrance hall is so ostentatious he almost turns on his heel and walks the couple blocks back to his shitty car. He steels his nerves and goes up to the black marble front desk instead.

He clears his throat. “Excuse me.”

The receptionist looks at his tux and gives him a patient smile limned with lipstick that probably says _mulberry_. “Are you here for the art show, sir?”

“That’s correct,” he says, forcing himself not to fidget. He doesn’t look at her again just in case he accidentally adopts her scorn.

“It’ll be that way. Ride up.” She indicates the elevators.  “Enter through the Paris Ballroom foyer.”

“Thanks,” he says, and tries not to hunch as he follows instructions.

The elevator ride is short, but in that time his anxiety rises to a dull buzzing in his ear. He walks down corridors paved with rugs that likely sold better than the ’88 Spindrift sailboat he got rid of when he left New Orleans, until he finds elegantly minimalist posters with the emblem of the Schatzkiste Craft Council in gold cursive loops next to an ornate doorway. There’s a woman dressed in a peak lapel tux much better fitted than his own blocking the way.

“Do you have a ticket, sir?” she asks him when he nears.

“Yeah.” He holds aloft the stub that Hannibal gave him as he left on Friday. She stamps it and returns it to him. “Thanks.”

“One moment.” She looks around before stepping in and righting his bowtie. She steps back. “Through there to the ballroom. The exhibition also continues in the Athens room and Vienna room. Enjoy.”

Will tries to be appreciative but mostly he’s mortified. “Thanks,” he repeats, and goes in.

The foyer is a riot of color—periwinkle walls and magenta drapes and a kaleidoscope palette of gowns punctuated with the black streaks of more tuxes. There are a lot of people—it’s just the front room and Will can see half of Baltimore’s elite. He walks right into the wall of sound of enthusiastic conversation, tinkling glasses, and a Chopin nocturne playing discretely from speakers he can’t see. He has an immediate headache.

He accepts the flute of champagne offered to him by a passing caterer, tastes it and remembers why he doesn’t like champagne. Then he goes into the ballroom proper.

It’s a sea of art. There are platforms everywhere, rostrums supporting canvases and prints and figurines and potteries with their artists standing beside them like pastors by their pulpits. There are even more people in here, meandering through the exhibits in a bespoke and couture procession. It’s quieter, as most of the attendees stare in polite, silent reverence at African diasporic art and pastel fluid sculptures and light pollution photographs and everything in between.

In a moment of clarity Will realizes he has no idea what he’s doing. He downs the rest of his drink and searches for Hannibal.

He’s not difficult to find. Most of the men are wearing muted and respectable shades of black, brown and blue. Hannibal is wearing the color of wine—his ubiquitous oxblood.

Will heads determinedly toward the broad bordeaux plane of his back. He has to pause to hand off his empty glass to another caterer, and while he does he watches Hannibal converse with the other patrons, his patrician nose and complex lips highlighted by the crystal chandelier overhead. He looks striking in profile.

When Will gets within a few feet of him, Hannibal turns. He begins, “Hello, Will—”

He stops short.

Will brings a hand up to his throat. He remembers how the bristles of his shaven half-beard had dotted his white sink, and how he thought his neck looked vulnerable without the stubble. “Hello, Dr. Lecter,” he returns.

Hannibal is staring at the lower half of his face. “Please, Will. Hannibal.”

“Hello, Hannibal,” Will says obediently, and Hannibal’s red eyes become stained glass. “How’d you—did you smell me walking up? My aftershave?”

“Of course.” Behind the red is the darkness again, and it’s something like an abyss, a void. “We’ll find something subtler to hide you next time.”

Then he leads them off.

Will is introduced to dozens of limp handshakes and disapproving glances; he’s devoured by a convoy of high society snobs and spit back out like something unpalatable. It’s obvious that his suit is sinfully cheap, and his conversation and etiquette betray him as blue collar. He looks like a phony, and the majority of the attendees he meets treat him like one. The conceit and egotism don’t affect him much beyond annoying him—the years have toughened his skin and the disrespect rolls off of him harmlessly. He sips another champagne and largely ignores everyone.

It’s hard to ignore the distinct effect Hannibal has on them, however. The same snooty people who looked down their noses at Will practically kneel down to kiss the tapered toes of Hannibal’s shoes. Groups part to make room for him; conversations bend and distort to the gravitational pull of his presence. Will could say without exaggeration that Hannibal walks like an idol among them. It’s equally amusing and pathetic, but worst of all it’s understandable—Hannibal cuts an impressive figure in his daring tux, with his lofty European bearing, with his old money and notable profession and incomparable sophistication. Will gets it.

He also gets the significant pause that comes every time Hannibal presents him as, “Will Graham, my friend.” He lets that roll off of him too.

Surprisingly, the only thing Will enjoys about the show is the art itself. He could never be mistaken for a connoisseur, but as the night progresses he develops an appreciation for some of the pieces. He likes the hardware displays best, trendy robotic sculptures that remind him of motors and engines with their movable and sometimes interactive parts. Some of the photography attracts him too—he remembers when his kid self used to spend the change he got for braiding rope in a shipyard in Kittery on disposable Kodaks and snap picture after picture of the blue-green Atlantic.

Sometimes Hannibal is dragged off to other circles, one second leaning in close to exhale hushed history into Will’s ear and the next making apologies and wading away into the crowd. Adrift, Will spends those moments alone challenging himself to something he’s never cared about before—he tries reconstructing the artists through their work.

It’s almost like reading a crime scene—he has the presentation and the materials and the design all there to work backward from without the time constraint or sense of urgency making him sweat with guilt. The flexibility of interpretation makes it harder, and a flush from the mental exertion and the bubbly champagne rises in his face.

He comes to stand before a painting about as tall as him. There’s a barcode of color marching across the horizontal center, primarily oranges and blues spliced with purple shadow and haloed in yellow. The canvas blurs to white at the top and bottom edges. Will doesn’t immediately see anything in it. His eyes lower to half-mast as he thinks.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?”

Will turns at the sudden voice. Next to him is an older graying gentleman—at a glance Will can see his tuxedo costs about his yearly salary. He’s leaning onto a Fabergé cane with an elaborate enamel handle; the Chopard watch visible on his left wrist has diamonds in it. Will could retire on the total value of the gentleman’s attire. He hunches.

“Yeah,” he says shortly, busying himself with his champagne so he doesn’t have to talk.

The gentleman turns back to the painting respectfully. “Damned if I know what it means,” he laughs, almost to himself. Will is startled by the bald honesty. It’s the first time tonight someone has been anything less than a pillar of aloof elegance, and the first time someone hasn’t balked at his low class manners.

Will considers letting the silence fall between them. Instead, as an olive branch, he says, “People. It’s a street. The colors are people. They’re indistinct because the artist sees them like that, passing by.”

The gentleman smiles. “You’ve enlightened me. Thank you.”

Will ducks his head, compulsively demurring, “I could be wrong.”

“No more wrong than I,” the gentleman assures him. “Do you critique?”

Will shakes his head. “This is my first time at one of these.” He thought that was painfully apparent.

“Ah.” The gentleman abandons the pretense of looking at the painting and faces him. “Are you enjoying your night?”

“It’s been fine.” It got better when he no longer had to make nice with the classists.

Smoothly, the gentleman asks, “Enjoying your date?”

Will has to fight back the words _Hannibal isn’t my date_. He’s not a child. “He’s fine too.”

“I disagree,” the gentleman says. Will is caught off guard. “Any date worth he’s salt wouldn’t have left you for a moment.”

Will realizes what’s going on—the epiphany startles and confuses him. He flounders for words. “He’s popular; he has to make the rounds. I understand.” He meant to say something discouraging, not excuse Hannibal, but that’s what comes out.

“I’m sure you’re better company than most here,” the gentleman says easily. “If he were smart, your date wouldn’t bother with the rounds.”

It’s been a long time since Will has been sweet-talked; he’s forgotten how to react, if he ever knew. “I’m not that great a date myself.” He looks down at his tux involuntarily.

The gentleman dismisses the words with a wave of the hand not bearing his weight onto his cane. “You’re exquisite,” he says simply and without drama. “If anyone’s told you otherwise tonight, they’re a fool.”

Will is speechless. The word _exquisite_ hits him like a truck.

The gentleman continues. “Perhaps your date is a fool as well. He could learn something about appreciating the exquisite.”

He says it in such a kindly, infatuated tone that Will almost doesn’t take offense by proxy, still reeling from confusion and skepticism. The slight pierces through his bewilderment, however. “Hannibal is an authority on the exquisite,” he says, a lot more defensively than he intends.

“You flatter me, Will,” Hannibal says without warning from beside him. Will almost drops his champagne—Hannibal saves him by plucking the stem from his hand.

“Dr. Lecter,” the gentleman greets. “We were just speaking of you.”

“Mr. Soto.” Hannibal gives him a close-lipped smile. “All good things, I hope.”

“Not at all,” Soto chuckles. “I unwittingly slandered you as a fool, though I don’t know that I’ll take it back.”

“Oh?” Hannibal looks at Will and says good-naturedly, “Whatever have you told him?”

Will’s flush deepens. “Nothing.”

“Indeed,” Soto corroborates. “Your dear Will is a man of few words. He was alone when I found him, however, and that says enough. Shame on you, doctor, for neglecting him.”

Hannibal turns to Will. “Shame on me,” he agrees. “Have I abandoned you, Will? I beg your pardon.” Then he takes a step closer and drops a hand on Will’s shoulder.

The touch electrifies Will.

He can feel Soto’s eyes on them. He makes an executive decision.

He leans into Hannibal and says, “I forgive you.”

“That’s much better,” Soto says. He remains utterly pleasant. “Now that I’ve done my good deed, I’ll leave you two to it.” He looks at Will with just as much admiration as before. “It was lovely to meet you. I hope you’ll come to another show.” He nods. “Good night, Dr. Lecter.” With a last smile, he limps to the next display.

Hannibal doesn’t take his hand away. “Had I known you would be honey to the old flies here, I would not have left you for so long.”

Will doesn’t think that’s a very flattering description of Soto, or a very accurate description of himself. “I was alright,” he shrugs. “I was looking around. It wasn’t so bad.” It was preferable to the elitist meet-and-greet from before.

“They’ve just opened up the terrace,” Hannibal informs him, stepping back. “It will be empty. I’ll bring you another glass.” The electric touch withdraws. He waits long enough for Will to nod and then he’s disappearing into the throng once more.

Will follows the implicit suggestion and weaves through the crowd and the art platforms to the veranda. The doors to outside have been swung outward and a thick red drape hung between them to keep the chill out of the ballroom. Will lifts it aside far enough to slip through.

It’s cold. Will doesn’t mind. There’s no one else out and the night is orange from the streetlamps and passing traffic. He walks over to the balustrade and braces his elbows on it, letting what wind bullies between Baltimore’s tall buildings tousle his hair as he leans over the concrete.

Hannibal joins him shortly. “For you,” he announces, seemingly without breaking the silence, offering a flute that glitters in the muted light.

Will takes it. “Thanks.” He turns back to the balustrade and is surprised when a jacket comes down on his back. It’s thick, lined with something soft and probably exorbitant on the inside, and it warms him instantly.

“I assumed you would want to linger,” Hannibal explains.

Will wrestles with a smile. “Thank you.” He tugs the jacket closer around himself, inhaling and smelling Hannibal’s tasteful cologne everywhere. It stomps out the scent of his aftershave. He looks down and snorts at the sight of the posh jacket over his thrifty tuxedo. “How do I look?” The sarcasm is palpable.

Hannibal’s mouth quirks. “Exquisite.”

=

There’s maintenance going on in the hall outside Jack’s office. Will sidesteps the janitor’s ladder and pushes through the glass door, only to be met with a wave of humidity that makes him stagger. Jack is sitting at his desk with his suit jacket off and his tie thrown over his shoulder, button-down rolled up to his elbows. He looks up from his papers and dots his forehead with a crumpled handkerchief.

“Will,” he growls in greeting. “Excuse the damn sauna.”

Will’s felt worse. “You wanted me?”

“I want an analysis.” Jack gestures to the chair in front of him.

Will sits and lets himself be filled in, flipping through the file Jack gives him as he listens. He begins to recognize the particulars of the case, and he frowns. Alana has mentioned this to him.

“You already have Dr. Bloom’s analysis,” he points out.

Jack frowns too. “I want a second opinion.” Which means Alana told him one thing and he wants to hear another.

The phone on Jack’s desk rings. He fits two fingers to the bridge of his nose and massages as he answers. When he hangs up he tells Will, “I need to see Applegate. He and I are in court tomorrow. I’ll be back.”

He leaves Will in the office, broiling in the moisture. Will closes his eyes and pretends he’s further south, in Biloxi with its punishing sun. His skin prickles familiarly with the sensation of slowly roasting.

The glass door swings open and he breaks himself away from the memory. Beverly makes a face as she steps inside, laden with a packet of reports and unfortunate enough to have worn a sweater to work.

“Hey, champ,” she says. Will wonders when she decided to start calling him that. “Where’s Jack?”

“Applegate’s,” he replies. She groans.

“He’ll be there ‘til next year,” she grouses. She puts the reports on the desk and props her hip against the edge.

A silence settles between them, not uncomfortable. Will can tell Beverly is suffering in the wet air, her face flooding pink and wisps of her hair starting to cling to her neck and cheeks. She looks back at him and breaks the quiet with an accusatory, “Well, aren’t you cool.”

“As a cucumber,” he confirms. That shocks a laugh out of her.

“Smartass,” she says with something very close to fondness. A thought occurs to her. “How was the art show?”

“Alright.” She raises an eyebrow. He revises, “Excruciating.” It earns him another laugh. “The art was nice. The people less so. My monkey suit didn’t do me any favors.”

“I _told_ you,” she smirks, dragging the back of her hand across her forehead. “I hope Lecter defended your honor.”

Will thinks about how Hannibal bought him coffee from a boutique café after they left the hotel, caffeine for the drive back to Wolf Trap; how he told Will to keep the coat, and from the compartment of his Bentley withdrew a pair of matching gloves; how he walked Will to his car despite his protests. He thinks of how his dogs had smelled him when he walked in his house and, after a brief sniff, left the new stuff alone.

“Sort of,” he says.

=

In his dream Will is nose to nose with the stag. Its breath steams through its big nostrils and puffs against Will’s face, hot and humid. Above Will’s head is the looming menace of its gnarled rack; against his chest are its oil-dark feathers. Its eyes are polished beads of obsidian that gradually brighten until they gleam the red of melted rock.

The stag takes a step forward and Will takes a step back. It takes another. Will takes another. Another step, and another, and then Will is making a steady retreat, never looking away.

Eventually he’s cornered—against what, he doesn’t know. The stag keeps coming forward, caging Will with its antlers and coming closer still. It pins him with its full weight, and then crushes him. There’s no room for Will to breathe. He starts to suffocate.

He wakes up with his lungs burning.

He swallows huge drinks of air, shaking on the towel he laid down no more than an hour ago according the clock. He strips off his wet shirt and shorts and involuntarily cries out at the resultant feeling of exposure, of too much space. He spends all of five minutes trying to be properly disturbed by his dream before he gets up.

He tugs his blanket from the bed and tucks his pillow under his arm and makes his way over to his dogs, who stir at his passing. He lies down right in the middle of them, rolling his bare body up in the covers to cushion himself against the floorboards. Instinctively, his pack scoots closer to pile on top of him.

Dakota and Toast lie across his feet. Angus and Rusty squeeze their big bodies against his back, Gizmo stuffed between them. Buster tucks himself into his belly. Winston curls up protectively by his head. Their combined weight stifles him.

It’s not enough.

=

The next body is in Manassas. Will looks out the window of Jack’s SUV as they pass the dignified brick facades of era houses, the domino stacks of colorful townhouses, the Harris Pavilion with its sleek blue roof. They don’t stop in the town itself; they cut through it to get to the forest at its outskirts.

They follow the trail of local police to a clearing much like the last. At its circumference stands an audience of firs, pin oaks, and butternut trees, their sagging branches dripping from a recent shower. An officer holds up the tape perimeter for Will and then he’s twenty feet from the body, hands fisted at his sides as he inhales through his nose and tries to brace himself.

Jack speaks quietly at his side. “Are you alright for this?”

Will looks around. Beverly’s not there yet. “I’m alright.”

He goes up to the body alone.

The victim is also a white male with brown hair, though he’s worse off than the last one. His neck bears the same posy of bruises but his face is bloated from a beating and the lumpy, sunken front of his shirt suggests his chest has been stomped in. Will feels at a glance that it’s the killer from Reston and Occoquan, but he looks anyway.

Will concentrates very, very hard—he focuses on the rage visible on the victim’s busted body, just the rage, only the rage, he doesn’t want anything else except the rage. He knows the heat of it must be blistering, an inferno, but he feels its warmth as if from a distance. It’s just a lick of flame on his skin as he trails the man to his jogging circuit—he’s wearing breathable tights under his shorts—and drags him, fighting, deeper into the woods. He knows that the struggling must have made him hotter but he feels too cool as he shoves the man to the ground and kicks him in the chest, over and over, before dropping to bear down on his throat.

A nearby policeman snickers, “You done, fed?”

Will’s concentration wavers.

The fear busts through like a tsunami, drowning out the echoes of the killer and submerging him in the man at his feet. Suddenly Will is coughing through the agony and airlessness of rib-punctured lungs, swinging weak punches that barely leave a mark on the solid body above him. He’s panicking and he’s dying.

Heading the wave of the victim’s terror is the spume of Will’s own fear. He looks at the careless slump of the victim, clearly unarranged, the careless devastation of the ruined chest cavity, the way it all screams _amateur_ —

When Will breaks the surface, he finds himself off to the side with a blanket around his shoulders. The police are resealing the perimeter. Jack is looking grim at his side. By the foul taste in his mouth Will assumes he stumbled off through the tape and puked into the roots of one of the butternuts. His stomach is still in a riot—he’s still treading, head barely above water, legs kicking at the fear that wants to drag him back under.

Jack twists off the top of a water bottle and holds it out. Will takes it with trembling hands, swishes some in his mouth, spits, pours some across his face, and downs the rest. He spills most of it.

“I asked if you were alright for this,” Jack says. He sounds tired.

“Same guy from Occoquan.” The words come out jilted. Will’s chin won’t stop quivering. “Jumped him on a run.”

Even though Jack mostly brought him here to link the scene to Occoquan, Will can tell he’s dissatisfied—any agent deserving of their badge could postulate that. Will doesn’t have anything else to give him. He won’t until he looks at the victims side-by-side with IDs and has had time to brainstorm and investigate. He wants to leave and vomit up the rest of the terror in his belly in private.

Jack puts a hand on his shoulder. The contact is not electric. He frowns and leans in, asking lowly, “What is it with this one, Will?”

“I don’t know,” he lies, voice cracking. “I can’t say. I can’t say.”

=

Will lasts less than an hour in Wolf Trap.

Jack took him directly home, situated Will with his dogs while trying to seem like he wasn’t situating, and pretended to forget the shock blanket on one of Will’s armchairs. He instructed Will to get food and sleep in whatever order he chose and to come back to the case in two days’ time, a generous offer he probably made because he knew Will would come back in one. Will said he’d try and watched Jack pull away through the window.

Then he went to the bathroom and threw up.

On the tile floor with the blanket around his shoulders, forehead braced against the cool porcelain of the toilet, staring at the backs of his eyelids branded with the image of himself strangled on a forest floor, spoiled by a neanderthal without no comprehension of the _waste_ —Will feels himself slide into hysterics.

He gets up off the floor and gets into his car.

The hour drive passes so quickly he worries that he’s lost time. His palms are clammy and they slip on the wheel, and he fogs up the window shield with his hyperventilation. He almost gets in an accident. He arrives whole at Hannibal’s office by a miracle.

He waits through someone’s appointment. By the time Hannibal finally emerges, making his customary check of the waiting room, Will is soaked in sweat and digging crescents into the arm of the chair he’s sitting in. His eyes are glassy—he’s somewhere else entirely.

“Will,” Hannibal says, surprised. He observes Will’s state in an instant, stepping back and gesturing, “Come in.”

Will bursts into the office, eyes wild and body still quaking. “He’s gonna strangle me,” he mutters, straddling delirium. Over and over again he’s felt hands come up around his throat, the tickle of grass at his back and his ribs snapping off in his chest.

Hannibal pauses before shutting the door behind them. “Who’s going to strangle you, Will?” he asks evenly. He radiates stability and serenity but Will is unreceptive.

“Occoquan,” he hisses. “He’s gonna choke me and then leave me.” In the woods by his house, when he’s walking the dogs and distracted by their play—a blow to the head and then he’ll be dragged to a dell like the others, beech and hickory and poplar voyeurs witnessing his desecration and devolution into common trash—

“Will,” Hannibal says. “You are in no danger here.”

Will turns to him, trying to make him understand. “Not him. Not him. He’s gonna leave me there—” He’s gulping down air but he can’t breathe. His lungs won’t fill. They’re skewered on his bones.

Hannibal tries to escort him to his chair. “Relax, Will.”

Will breaks away, grabbing tufts of his hair and telling Hannibal in a desperate moment of clarity, “ _I can’t_.”

“You can,” Hannibal tells him. He sounds so certain. Will wants to believe him, but he’s nauseous again and he can barely see through the fog in his eyes and he’s going to die.

“I can’t,” he moans. “I can’t, I can’t—”

Before he can blink, he’s being spun around and shoved into a bare spot of wall, the wind knocked out of him. The wall is hard against his cheek and chest, and then it’s hard against all of him as Hannibal steps in to pin him there with his body.

For a moment Will thinks this is the end he’s been reliving all day, but Hannibal doesn’t do anything else. He simply leans into Will and presses his sluggish heartbeat to Will’s rabbit pulse, breathing easily against Will’s back until Will’s high wheezing slows to deep, albeit stuttering, exhales.

It might be fifteen minutes later. Close to his ear, Hannibal says quietly, “Are you familiar with the nature of a crush, Will? Perhaps you know it as a squeeze chute.” Will’s hands are stuck between his belly and the wall. He flexes his fingers and nods. Hannibal continues anyway. “It is a device used to calm a variety of animals—cattle, horses, etc. The sides of the device are closed around them until the pressure renders them immobile and, in many cases, calm.” He’s very warm through his blue suit and Will’s worn flannel. “Are you calm, Will?”

Will checks. He’s still sweating, but the haze has dissipated and he can see that he’s next to Hannibal’s display of spiral-carved amber chess pieces. There is no forest. He nods again.

“I’m going to step back now,” Hannibal announces, and then slowly separates them until he’s holding Will down with only his palms. After a moment he takes his hands back, and his fingertips leave sparks on Will as they brush him on the retreat.

Will stays huddled against the wall. Hannibal doesn’t move him. He simply asks, “Would you like to sit down? I believe we should talk.”

Will shakes his head. He’s fully aware now. His muscles feel shredded from vomiting and shaking and being thrown like a sack, but he’s fully aware, no longer afraid.

In the fear’s place, however, is mortification.

“I’d like to go home,” he says. He hadn’t known it was possible to feel this humiliated, facing the corner of his therapist’s office like a child in punishment. He wishes Hannibal wasn’t there, that Hannibal hadn’t seen him, that he had never come here.

“I don’t think that would be wise,” Hannibal says, but Will is already stepping back and rushing toward the door.

“Thank you for your—help,” he blurts. “I’m sorry about this. God, sorry—”

“Will,” Hannibal interjects, but Will slips through the exit and is gone.

The ride back to his house creeps by like a year. Will is present for every second of it. When he gets home he steps over his dogs and gets some spray and a sponge and scrubs his entire bathroom with bleach. He deliberately doesn’t think.

By the time the black curtain of night comes down, he’s gotten himself to the wrong side of tipsy. Before he lies facedown in his pillows and sinks like a stone into inebriated unconsciousness, he kicks all his dogs off of his bed and puts on Hannibal’s coat and gloves. He sleeps deeply.

=

A knock on the door thuds through Will’s skull. He slides out of the jacket as he slips off his mattress and staggers to the door, biting off his gloves and tossing them to the side before he grasps the handle. Alana is on the other side. Her eyebrows rise at the sight of him.

“Death warmed over?” he asks, voice gritty. There’s an ache in his head and a flutter in his belly—he can only imagine how he looks.

“Worse,” she says apologetically. She presents another brown paper bag. “My timing is impeccable.”

He lets her inside and she takes them to the kitchen. Will tries not to slouch so much as he sets the table, though he can’t quite manage not to wince when he accidentally wanders into stray bars of sunlight. Alana waits until he’s done before unpacking the homemade egg bagel sandwiches she brought and distributing them. There’s aged cheddar and pork bacon on them. Will could weep.

As they eat Alana explains herself. “Jack called me. He sounded concerned.”

Will buys himself time to reply by fetching them both tall glasses of orange juice. It’s the only drink besides whiskey he currently has in his possession. Eventually he decides on a mild, “Concerned about what?”

Alana doesn’t look impressed. “Try what happened in Manassas.”

He appreciates her honesty. “I’m alright,” he assures her. “It was an isolated episode.”  
  
“That’s not what I heard,” Alana says. She’s not hurt by his lie, just put out. “I’ll come right out and say I’m concerned for you too.”

The words don’t rankle like Will thought they would. “Thanks for that.” He eats the rest of his bagel in slow, contemplative bites, trying to decide how much he wants to divulge and how much of that he can bring himself to say. “I haven’t been sleeping well,” he says eventually. “It’s made things…harder.”

The partial truth puts her off his scent. “Have you talked to Hannibal about it?”

Suddenly Will is bulldozed with the memory of Hannibal talking him down from the precipice of lunacy, of having to be gentled back to coherency like an animal. “Yeah,” he says, and pushes his plate away.

Alana senses his distress and forgoes plucking that raw nerve, instead rising to help him clean the dishes and take care of the dogs. Her perfume smells like almond extract. Will likes it. He smells it every time she passes him to scoop out dog food or fill the water bowls. He wonders why it doesn’t make his pulse jump anymore.

He stands there awkwardly in his sleepwear as he shows her out. She’s lovely silhouetted in the light coming in through the open front door.

“You’ll be alright without me?” she teases.

He huffs out a chuckle for her. “Yeah. Probably. Who knows.”

She’s turning to leave when her eyes catch on Hannibal’s jacket where it’s strewn across his rumpled sheets. She pauses. Then she’s gone.

Will wishes he had coffee in the house. He doesn’t want to start getting ready. He has enough of a hangover to want to crawl back under his covers and languish in his sheets until the throb behind his eyes and the tug in his stomach abates, and enough shame over the night before to strongly consider doing it.

He’s surprised by a second knock halfway through getting dressed.

This time it’s Beverly, two greasy rolls of gas station doughnuts in her hands, one of the powdered kind and the other of chocolate the texture of melted candle wax.

“I know I’m unannounced. Sorry,” she says. “I heard about Manassas and I’m not here to talk about it. Just here to give you these.” She holds out the doughnuts.

Will eats them even though he’s mostly full.

She declines when he tries to share but accepts the orange juice he offers. She hugs all of his dogs while he pours her a glass and they follow her into the kitchen.

Gizmo sits under her chair at the table. “Traitor,” Will says, and he’s snickered at.

Beverly waits until he’s done thumbing the powder off of his chin to ask, “Bad night?” Will must make a face because she puts her hands up. “Backing off,” she promises.

“Thanks,” Will says, but he wasn’t offended. He lets the silence between them stretch on, the sound of her nails scratching Angus behind the ears loud in the quiet, before he admits, “Last night I was a dipshit.”

If she’s caught off guard, she doesn’t show it. “More than usual?” she asks, keeping it relaxed. “How so?”

“I went to Hannibal,” he tells her. “I lost it for a bit, and I went to Hannibal.” He’s tempted to tell her all of it. He gives her an abridged version. “I made an ass of myself.”

She mulls it over. “Yes,” she agrees, but it’s her peculiar brand of sympathy and it’s not cruel. “So it was like a human hug machine?”

Will puts his face in his hands. “Beverly,” he says to her unrepentant grin. He feels abruptly much better.

“Will,” she mimics his tone. Then she leers. “Well, you were on the right track.”

He’s the one caught off guard. “What?”

“It’s a step forward,” she smirks. “Getting a man to throw you against the wall.”

Will makes her leave. She laughs all the way to her Prius. He finishes getting ready and concentrates on not associating the weight of Hannibal at his back with the flush that won’t bleed from his face.

=

The sky is washed out, the color and texture of soap suds. The Academy parking lot is wet from this morning’s drizzle—Will’s shoes squeak on the tarmac as he walks out to his car, keys in his mouth and arms full of a big box. Inside it are the parts to a model he used for demonstration, a dollhouse refurbished to resemble the layout of a home in Kennesaw. The class had leaned forward in their seats for a better look as he explained the route the Clay Maker took through the rooms in 1996.

He puts the box on the roof of his car so he can spit his keys into his hand and open his trunk. He’s pushing some old Licking County telephone records and a rented evidence container of immolated clothing out of the way when he feels someone come up behind him. He turns around.

It’s the student, the big one.

“Is this kindergarten?” he demands.

Will pushes his glass back up his nose. “What?”

“You brought show and tell,” the student says. “Like we’re a bunch of goddamn idiot kids.”

Will has neither the time nor the inclination to deal with this. He’s on his lunch break. “I told you before.” He searches for the student’s name and gives up when it doesn’t come to mind. “If you have a problem with the way I teach, take it up with the department.” He takes the box down and tries to sidestep the student to put it in the back.

The student lets his massive body block Will’s way. His face twists in a grimace. “The department will just find a way to justify hiring grade-school trickle down.”

“Looks like you’re out of luck then.” Will refuses to get in a pissing contest. “Step aside please.”

“I’ve been up shit creek since I got into your class,” the student says over him. “Didn’t know I was signing up for subpar teaching from an agent reject—”

“Excuse me,” Hannibal says, appearing suddenly on the other side of Will. “Pardon my interruption, but I’m afraid I must steal Agent Graham from you.”

Will feels his skin ripple with chills.

He’s never empathized with Hannibal before. Hannibal is and always has been virtually unreadable to read him, a stolid suit of armor through which Will glimpses only the flashes of flesh that Hannibal deigns to show him. Right now Hannibal is pure cold courtesy, his tone plated with frigid politeness, but Will can feel the gap in that armor like a draft from a crack in a wall.

The student opens his mouth and the gap widens, yawning wide enough for Will to see through.

On the other side is a chasm.

The student closes his mouth, gives a terse nod, and stalks away.

Will can’t see what Hannibal’s face looks like without turning around. He puts his box down in his trunk and slams the door shut before he does so.

The chasm is sealed. Hannibal greets him, “Good afternoon, Will.”

Will forgets his manners. “You came all the way out here to fight my battles?” he asks, a little too acidly. He can’t bring his gaze higher than Hannibal’s chest. It’s been a while since he’s seen him—he canceled their last appointment in the name of a faculty dinner he ultimately didn’t attend. Will wouldn’t call it avoidance, but it’s close enough. He’s surprised and a little dismayed to see Hannibal now. Those fifteen minutes in Hannibal’s office are fresh in his mind.

“To take you to lunch,” Hannibal corrects him, indicating the cooler at his side. “Shall we?”

Will desperately wants to refuse. He wants to get in his car and drive to a fast food joint and inhale a heart attack and see Hannibal in maybe ten years.

He locks his car and follows.

=

They eat in a nearby park. Will leads them to a gazebo on the hill above the park’s pond, a stout white hexagon with a green oxford clerestory. Without thinking Will takes off his jacket and puts it down as a barrier between Hannibal’s suit and the wet wooden bench, damp from the leaky roof’s run-off. He’s immediately chilly and more than uncomfortable with himself. Hannibal has mercy on him and merely thanks him before sitting and pulling out their food.

There’s cayenne-peppered lobster and eggs on pounded crackers, creamy Hawaiian coleslaw, and lemon tarts with whipped puff paste. Hannibal also serves him a pungent cup of some raspberry vinegar drink that goes down cool but sits hot in his belly. It’s all amazing. They face the water, watching the geese skirt the pond shore and flirt with the children throwing pieces of carrot for them. Will thinks he probably shouldn’t get used to his friends feeding him. He ponders the word _friends_.

Hannibal finishes eating after him. Will helps clean everything up and return the tupperware to the cooler, and when that’s done he slouches over the gazebo’s railing and stares at the pond as he waits for the inevitable. Hannibal doesn’t make him wait long.

“You’ve been gone a while,” he comments obliquely. Will wonders if he was in a hurry this morning—his hair is pomade free instead of neatly gelled, and the light wind shifts ash brown strands of it across his forehead.

“Work,” Will shrugs, and then winces. He probably could have waited longer to put his foot in it.

Hannibal tuts. “Work has been far less kind to you than you have been to it.” He laces his fingers together on the banister. “Our last meeting left me worried.”

Will scrubs his face with his hands. “Or we could forget that that ever happened.” He’s had a bad empathy trip before—it was during an escapade with the New Orleans police force, and his partner at the time had been so spooked he’d requested a transfer. This one was worse. He doesn’t want to talk about it, or what it implies.

Hannibal does, however, and that means they will. “Was there a catalyst to the incident?” When Will shifts anxiously in his seat, he prods, “I’ve seen the details of the Occoquan case—it is, comparatively, tame. What about it disturbed you so, Will?”

For a moment Will thinks _I can’t say, I can’t say_ , but then he realizes that this isn’t Jack. Hannibal can’t possibly think worse of him. “I saw myself,” he says. “Not like normal, not as the killer. I was the victim.”

“Have you never empathized with a victim before?” Hannibal asks. The tips of his bangs tickle his pale eyelashes—he needs a haircut. Will looks away.

“Sure I have,” he mutters. “But this was different.”

Hannibal’s head tilts. “In what way?”

The faint sounds of geese honks and high laughter fill the space between them as Will tries to summon the words. He’s not sure how to explain himself; he doesn’t know how the truth will sound outside of his head. “It wasn’t the dying,” he admits. “It was how I died.”

“The strangulation?”

“No.” Will closes his eyes. “The…the _artlessness_.”

Hannibal gives him all of his attention, and it makes goosebumps prick Will’s skin. “Please explain, Will.”

Will rubs at the raw line his glasses have ground into his nose. “The scene was slapdash. A child could have done it, for all the thought that went into it.” The beginnings of a headache make his brain feel tight in his skull. “I saw myself as the victim, thrown away like garbage, and it was the most vile thing I’ve felt in a long time.” He opens his eyes and looks back at the water. “The thought of dying like that—it terrified me.”

Hannibal is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “You are afraid of being murdered by a killer with no design.”

Will jerks. Sometimes he feels like glass to Hannibal, utterly transparent. He exhales, “When I…showed up…at your office, I thought Occoquan was coming to get me. I thought that I was going to die, that a tacky, incompetent, mediocre—a—a _lesser_ killer was going to strangle me and leave me out to dry like macaroni art.”

“A lesser killer,” Hannibal muses. “Less than whom?” Will purses his lips. “That day you told me _not him_. If not him, then who?”

Will doesn’t even have to think about it. “The Ripper.”

There’s that draft again. “Why, Will?”

“He’s the best,” Will says with grim confidence. “If Occoquan is finger-painting, the Ripper is da Vinci.”

The chasm cracks wider beside him. Will concentrates on the breech and is abruptly reminded of the bloody dog’s empty eyes.

Hannibal is silent for so long that Will thinks he might have miscalculated how far he could still fall in his eyes. He stares hard at a goose paddling across the pond and says, “I’m sorry to put you off. I know what I sound like.”

Hannibal tells him, “I am not put off.”

Will looks at him and is surprised to find that he means it.

=

Will has paper cuts up to the wrist. His short nails are dried out from flipping through papers for the past three hours and his cuticles have split on every finger. There’s a mound of documents on the rickety table in front of him and a carpet of them at his feet. He’s bored.

Next to him, Beverly groans and massages her temples. They’ve been in the warehouse storeroom of a foreclosure firm for most of the morning, digging through closed files for a link between one of the attorneys and a mishandled property that might be doubling as storage for victims. This isn’t Will’s case either, but his class was delayed due to an unexpected film of ice over the roads, a drizzle that froze during the night. He doesn’t regret coming to help, per se, but he does wish the industrial heater in the room wasn’t quite so efficient—it’s uncomfortably warm, even to him.

Beverly has already stripped down to her tank top. Her back is covered in marks again. There’s a particularly vivid welt next to the tattoo of a flock of bats on her right shoulder blade.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she says suddenly, pushing herself out of her chair. Will thinks she’s talking about the files until she points at him. “Out with it.”

He startles. “What?”

“You’re thinking _really loud_ ,” she grumbles. “Whatever it is, just say it.”

Will averts his eyes. He hadn’t actually formulated a full question, but now that she’s said something he can feel it percolating. It embarrasses him. He doesn’t speak right away.

She twists her hair into a quick bun. “Work on that,” she orders, and steps out of the storeroom.

Will does. When she comes back, a few vending machine snacks in hand, he says, “The woman you spent the night with. Did she ask to do that?”

Beverly inhales a chip.

“Sorry,” Will says. “Never mind.”

Beverly coughs, ”I don’t kiss and tell, Will.”

Will’s shoulders come up and he goes back to pulling apart files.

Beverly smacks her chest a few times and relents, “I didn’t mean that.” Eyes watering, she takes a sip of soda. “Why do you ask?”

Will isn’t sure how to answer the question. He shrugs and stares hard at the documents.

Neither of them speak for a moment. The whirr of the heater is obnoxiously loud. Beverly sighs.

“Last night just asked for no holds barred,” she says finally. “She asked for permission to scratch, yes.”

“You gave it.” Will digests that. “Is it the pain?”

“Eh. Not really.” Beverly pulls a face. “It’s the …lack of restraint. The ‘animal release’ part of it.” She circles her hands in the air as she tries to articulate. “It makes the whole _civilized_ thing a lot easier.”

“Oh,” Will says.

Beverly hands him her fruit snacks.

=

Will sets his Penn reel cleaner back down on his worktable.  He’d pulled it out in preparation for a morning in the tributary, along with his vest and waders thrown across his bed and a spectrum of lures laid across the closed lid of his tackle box. It’s been a few weeks since the last time he’s gone—Jack has been insistent and the wane of fall has made the air more crisp than comfortable. He’d woken up determined to fish.

He’s reconsidering. His pack is fidgety, too restless to wait obediently on the muddy banks while he loiters in the stream. He realizes they’ve been confined to the house and the yard recently, a narrow radius for seven dogs. They’d probably like to stretch their legs.

Will finishes his meager breakfast and then dresses for a traipse through the woods—he pulls a long-sleeve crew neck over his t-shirt and squirms into a pair of frayed jeans. When Dakota sees him stomping into his old sneakers, she yips, excited. The rest of the dogs join the chorus.

He opens the door and they spill out into the frosty grass, darting in circles around him as he jogs down the porch steps to the lawn. He kneels, gets a wet kiss from someone before he hushes them, and says, “We’re taking a field trip. Behave or we go home. Understand?”

Rusty barks. “Good enough,” Will says, and stands. He points and makes a noise like a gunshot.

They take off into the woods.

Will laughs and the sound condenses into a cloud. The scrabble of blunt nails on the carpet of brittle leaves and detritus breaks the morning stillness irreverently, and Will smiles at the receding swarm of his pack until Winston glances back and woofs.

He catches up to them and they begin a mostly sedate walk. Will trails his fingers along the trunks of dogwood and brushes off the spines of hemlock that catch on his shirt. He’s shivering under only two layers but between the climbing sun and the exertion he anticipates warming up soon.

He’s right—without warning the dogs start giving chase to something. He’s feeling too magnanimous to tell them to _heel_ , so he lets them dash off and is forced to run to keep up. He’s not exactly in shape; he gets winded fast, but he remembers his distant training and regulates his breathing and jogs through the muscle burn.

The dogs lead him through tightly knit firs and across treacherous patches of moss and into a copse so thick the foliage whips his cheeks. His throat and lungs start to tingle with the cold but he feels exhilaration build up like carbonation inside him and fizz out everything else. More than once Will tries to catch sight of what they’re running after, though the trees generally obscure his efforts. It isn’t until they break into a field of sweet vernalgrass that he sees the rabbit hopping frantically ahead of them.

That’s also when he sees the bloody dog leading the pack.

Though he’s now sweating rings into his crew neck, Will feels abruptly chilled. His first instinct is to give a shrill whistle and halt his dogs in their tracks, but the chase intensifies and it isn’t long before Will is left behind.

He tries to find a burst of speed in his tiring body. His breakfast wasn’t big enough to lend him the strength for this—his thighs are shaking and air whistles through his nose. His vision briefly blurs and in that split second his foot catches on the gnarled finger of a tree root and he goes down.

His palms, elbows, and chin get scraped. He hisses. Buster, the tail of the pack, disappears from view, and Will feels panic grip him by the heart. He tries to claw back up to his feet but his ankle is tangled in the root and the bulk of his sneaker soles won’t let him tug it out. He kicks his shoes off and tries to stand, only to find that the worn denim of his jeans split under the strain and the threads are caught too. He shimmies out of them and gets up and continues running.

When he catches up with the pack he finds them huddled in a circle, most of them growling or crouching with their hackles raised. Will breaks through the line of them in time to see the bloody dog launch itself at Winston. Between them lies the torn, cooling body of the rabbit.

Will’s heart stops. His socked feet are planted; he can’t move. He watches as Winston goes down under the assault, the two dogs crashing into a patch of tall weeds, entwined and snarling. The bloody dog snaps his jaws at Winston’s throat, but Winston twists and scratches his belly with his hind legs, kicking him off.

They growl at each other, muzzles low to the ground, before clashing together again. This time the bloody dog rakes claws down Winston’s face, splitting his snout, leaving shallow grooves. Will feels a noise rise in his throat but it dies before it can pass his lips—Winston rolls them over and returns the favor, much deeper. The bloody dog is bigger but thinner, and Winston has had the benefit of food and shelter. He buries his teeth in the bloody dog’s shoulder and start to shake.

Will can suddenly move. He sprints over to them, sticks an arm between them, and crowbars them apart. The moment Winston’s weight is gone the bloody dog darts away. Winston, trembling with pain and favoring one side, tries to put himself between it and Will, leaning on Will’s legs so that he’s forced to stumble back into the protective circle of the rest of the pack. Will pushes him gently away, tears off his crew neck, and tries to wrap Winston in the gray fabric.

Behind him, Angus lets out a ferocious bark. Will spins around in time to see the bloody dog butt Rusty to the ground and then his back is smacking the ground hard, the bloody dog’s weight like a boulder on his chest.

He turns his head in time to avoid a bite to the face, and cries out when nails score the junction of his neck and shoulder. Blood from the snout wound flecks Will’s face as teeth clack ineffectually next to his cheek—he’s holding the bloody dog back with quavering arms, gritting his teeth at the claws that leave furrows in his side.

He hears high yapping and then the bloody dog twists around to yowl in its unnatural voice at Gizmo where he digs his teeth into its mangy tail. Dakota barrels into its side while it’s distracted and shoves it into a tree—gasping, Will flips over and tries to jump to his feet, slipping on pine needles.

He looks back and sees the bloody dog preparing to jump on Dakota. Buster teethes at Will’s socks, trying to pull him back, but Will makes a decision and charges forward.

He catches the bloody dog in midair. When they hit the ground, Will pins the dog with his greater weight, ducks another scratch, takes a filthy ear in his mouth and bites down.

The bloody dog goes limp.

There’s a peculiar silence, full of noise. The sound of birdsong chimes from far away. More immediate is the sound of Winston’s strangled growl, choked with blood; the sound of Toast whimpering over Rusty’s labored breaths; the sound of Angus pacing back and forth. Buster yips once. Dakota comes close and noses at Will’s bare knee.

Will’s mouth tastes like ash. Slowly he unclenches his jaw. When the bloody dog does nothing, simply lies there panting, he relaxes his hold. The bloody dog turns his head and stares at him with its empty eyes, but doesn’t move. After a minute Will pushes himself off of it and kneels.

Winston is hobbling toward him, Buster on his bad side. Dakota pushes herself into Will’s armpit, bushy tail sweeping the ground before settling on one of the bloody dog’s back paws. Angus bounds over and starts sniffing Will furiously. Eventually Rusty lumbers to his feet and trails Toast over to them. The heat of eight dogs spares Will from the cold.

By the time they make their way back to the house, the sun is tall in the sky and melting the ice crystals off of the trees. Will should be freezing in just a t-shirt and boxer-briefs and socks, but there’s a warmth in his belly like whiskey without the burn and it banishes the tremor from his limbs. Behind him his pack leaps along with tails wagging and tongues lolling out of split-faced grins, grimy and dirty and ecstatic because Will didn’t stop them when they broke away to tussle in the dirty leaves where the rabbit corpse lied. At the back, the bloody dog follows.

Will steps into his yard like he’s come back from exile. There’s a Bentley in his driveway, Hannibal leaning against the dark hood. His eyes scour Will from head to toe, taking in the blood spatter on his face, the livid marks on his neck, the punctures that have seeped through his shirt, the forest rash on his thighs, the cut heels of his feet. Will can only guess what he looks like, with his crown of burs and twigs and his dogs around him like a mangy royal court.

Hannibal sets the pot in his hands down in Will’s porch chair and makes his way across the grass without a care for his expensive shoes. He comes to a stop right in front of Will and takes Will by his wrists.

“We’ll need to treat these,” he says, brushing his thumbs across Will’s raw palms. It hurts. “As well as the rest of your injuries.”

Will raises his head. Hannibal isn’t looking at his hands—his eyes, stained glass, are boring into Will’s.

“Go shower,” he orders.

Will goes.

Stripping out of his clothes makes him aware of the pain and the cold. The water is too hard and too hot, even before the boiler clanks to life. The warmth in his belly is extinguished by the sight of the blood and grime sloughing off his skin and sinking down the drain.

Will dresses in the bathroom, stepping into new underwear and gingerly pulling on a clean shirt. He looks out the window once as he towels his hair and sees Hannibal hosing down his dogs.

When he finally goes downstairs he finds his pack lying on towels in front of a new fire, Winston’s nose shiny with medicinal gel. The smell of meat is strong—something’s warming in the oven. Will enters the kitchen and finds Hannibal sitting at the table, suit jacket hanging on the back of his chair, sleeves rolled up, Will’s first aid kit open in front of him.

The bloody dog is at his feet.

“Sit down, Will,” Hannibal says, indicating the chair beside him.

Will sits.

=

That night Will dreams. He’s cradled in the boughs of the tree in his yard, draped in a quilt of leaves and fronds that hangs to the ground like willow hair, a clump of fibrous sod for his pillow. The stag is watching him from the forest, antlers tangling with the branches and red eyes beckoning.

Will is too tired to get up and accept the invitation.

=

Airports always give Will a headache. It’s a Saturday and BWI Marshall is packed to the brim, which makes it worse. There’s a father behind him toting twin girls who won’t stop bickering and a CEO in front of him biting her nails over the flight delay. Will is shaking with secondhand stress, crumpling his ticket in his sweaty hand. Beside him, Beverly clucks her tongue.

“Here you go, champ,” she says, pressing a bottle into his hand.

Will accepts the ibuprofen with an intensely heartfelt, “Thanks.”

The line to the gate door starts moving. The staff member scanning tickets looks as drained as Will feels. Price and Zeller disappear into the throat of the runway several people ahead of them. Beverly lets Will go through first, and in ten minutes they’re buckling into adjacent seats on their Hartford-bound plane.

There’s a body waiting for Will at the end of the three hour flight. He does what he can to brace himself, unraveling his earphones and turning on his weathered Phillips music player and preparing to go under, but before he can Beverly sucks in a breath.

“What the hell is this?” she asks. She’s pointing at his neck.

Will tugs his collar up higher. “Nothing.”

A slow grin spreads across Beverly’s face. “…Did you get in a fight?”

Will sputters, “I was running in the forest with my dogs.”

“Mmhm.” Beverly merely raises an eyebrow but it’s enough to channel a truly staggering amount of disbelief. The look collapses into a leer and she admits, “I was going to ask if they belonged to Lecter.”

Will’s face feels radiant with all the blood rushes to it. “No,” he says emphatically, and is shaken to the core by his own disappointment.

=

The back of Will’s neck is sweaty, his usual response to having to interact directly with his students. The woman in front of him is as tall as he is; her wiry curls frame her stern, attentive face. Her stance says she’s ex-police too. She has her legal pad braced in the crook of her strong arm and is jotting down shorthand notes as he mutters through an explanation of the motivations of the Willamina Wildebeest.

“It wasn’t degradation to him,” he says. “He considered animals on the same level as people.”

She looks repulsed and thoughtful. “It wasn’t an insult, mixing the bodies with deer meat.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Will agrees. “It was his message: there’s a little animal in all of us.” A bead of sweat rolls across his scratches and they burn. “When he killed—he thought he was doing them a favor by releasing it.”

The woman thanks him and leaves. The scent of shea butter leaves with her. She holds open the door for someone coming in and when Will finally turns off the projector he can see that it’s Jack, striding forward with his hands behind his back.

“The animal in us,” he muses. “You believe that, Will?” It’s too casual to be anything but a precursor to a demand for Will’s help. Will remains silent. Jack drops the pretense and says,”Well, better get used to the leash. I want you with Bowman in Documents.” He turns on his heel.

Will gathers his stuff and goes with him.

=

It takes Will a while to get home. He got a drunk text from Beverly just as he was fixing himself a cup of chamomile as an experiment—he put his shoes and coat back on heroically and drove out to Dogfish Head Alehouse to pick her up. He dropped her off at her apartment in D.C. around ten, helping her out of his car and leaving her with her roommate, a woman with one side of her head shaved who shouldered Beverly easily and thanked Will in a gruff, sleepy burr. Half of his pack is asleep when he returns.

The bloody dog is sitting elevated on the hearth. It took Will three hours to properly wash and detangle its pelt; now it gleams in the firelight. For a moment Will is concerned it’s too close to the blaze, but it seems unaffected. Dakota and Toast are licking at its muzzle.

When Will finally falls into bed, he feels the mattress dip as Winston jumps up and lies down next to him. Technically it’s against the rules but Will hasn’t been particularly strict recently—he turns his face into the pillow and buries one hand in Winston’s fur and closes his eyes.

After a few minutes the bed dips again, creaking this time. The bloody dog settles down on Will’s other side, heavier now that Will has set out an extra bowl for it. Will feels it pressed hot to his spine.

He sleeps fitfully, but he sleeps.

=

Jack is in court again, this time with Salazar and Trujillo, and traffic makes Beverly late. Will ends up going to Potomac with Price and Zeller, keeping to himself in the backseat while they squabble about the confirmation threshold of positive gunshot residue reports. They dissect the city to get to the crime scene—Will notices that more and more of the cars driving next to them look like Hannibal’s. The sight of the chic cluster of Potomac Village makes Will hunch in his seat, and he turns away from the window when they loop briefly through a residential area—he’s always found affluence a little bit galling.

They end up driving down a one-lane asphalt road to the river’s edge where the broken half of an old aqueduct juts into the water. Come straight from the courthouse, Jack is waiting outside the familiar boundary of police tape, looking less dour than usual. Will goes straight to him.

“This one’s different, Will,” Jack tells him. “I hesitate to give it to Occoquan, but it fits the victim profile.”

Will absorbs that but doesn’t ask for clarification, wary of influencing himself. He lets Jack lift the tape for him and goes on through.

An officer helps Will down to the skinny ledge under the aqueduct’s first arch. There’s only about a foot of room for standing—the body takes up most of the space. There’s a two-seater boat with a tiny motor stalling about twenty feet away. Will wonders about it until he realizes Jack probably put the officers there to watch him; when they remain quiet and unobtrusive, he turns away.

The corpse surprises him—the violence on the other two victims is conspicuously absent. White again with the same dark curls, he could be sleeping, if this weren’t the underside of a decaying bridge. His button-down and slacks are a little rumpled but otherwise he’s entirely peaceful, absent the bruising around his throat.

The body doesn’t reveal much, so Will focuses on the circumstances. The pendulum sweeps the man back onto the top of the aqueduct, writing something—there are errant pen marks all over his hands—in the soft latter light of the end of the day. Caught on the corner of an exposed brick is a lanyard with a mascot print—a teacher wiling away the post-school afternoon at the river, surprised by the sudden clench of big hands around his windpipe.

Will closes his eyes. His air cuts off and his heels scuff the ground futilely, blunt fingernails trying without success to dig through a thick sleeve. Above him the hulking form of his murderer looms, faced twisted into a grimace and sweat popping with effort. Will is almost shocked back to himself by the hissed _Graham!_ that slithers through the killer’s clenched teeth as he dies, but the panic and the remote rage abort at that moment anyway—someone came before the killer could do more, headlights beaming like warning beacons down the road, scaring the killer into skidding down the bank with the corpse and stowing it out of sight.

Will opens his eyes, leaning hard into the wall but otherwise fine. He replays the sound of his name in that venomous voice, confused. He thinks on it as the officer helps him back up and escorts him to Jack.

Jack sees him walking upright and in control and claps him on the back. “Verdict?”

“It’s Occoquan,” Will confirms. “This was even more of a rush job—there was barely time to kill the victim. Someone was coming, so the killer jumped down and stashed the body.” Will thinks for a moment. “There’ll be a print this time. Don’t let anybody get in Price’s way.”

That’s all he reveals. Jack sends him back to the car and Will dozes there while Price takes out his equipment and accepts assistance down to the scene. He wakes briefly to the sound of his name and is instantly sent back to suffocating, but it’s Zeller leaning in to turn on the heater and place his jacket across Will.

“Just me,” he says awkwardly. “Sleep tight. Bed bugs and all that.”

Will gives him a groggy, “Thanks,” and naps.

=

Will stares at the Luristan short sword mounted on Hannibal’s office wall. Its handle flares at the end, and the luminous green gloss on the sword makes the half-moon pommel glow. It was made by a semi-nomadic society in northeastern Iran a few millennia ago, Hannibal told him. More than once Will has been tempted to touch.

“Are you cold?” Hannibal asks him, closer than Will expects.

Will blinks. “Excuse me?”

“You still have your coat,” Hannibal explains. “May I take it?”

Will looks down at himself. “Yeah. Please.” He gets as far as unzipping his coat before he feels Hannibal move behind him to reach around and grab the flaps, tugging it open and pulling it off of him. His fingers—surgeon’s, artist’s, musician’s—skim Will’s chest and neck, brushing the scab on his throat. Static noise tingles in the fingers’ wake.

Hannibal retakes his seat. Will goes to sit in front of him.

“You looked at another scene,” Hannibal prompts. “From the Occoquan killer.”

Will nods. “In Potomac.”

“You appear to have suffered no ill effects,” Hannibal says, looking him over searchingly. His scrutiny flays Will.

Will appreciates the lack of comparison to the last time he looked. “This time was different.”

Hannibal waits for him to elaborate. Will thinks back to the _Graham!_ whispered above him, the same _Graham!_ that’s been ringing in his ears since Zeller and Price dropped him off at his car. “My mind,” he starts. “There’s a crossed wire somewhere.”

Hannibal leans forward. “What do you mean?”

“When I looked,” Will says. “I heard the killer say my name.”

Hannibal looks very intrigued.

His regard is almost a tangible weight. Will continues haltingly, “I didn’t tell Jack. My subconscious isn’t exactly—reliable. I have no way of knowing where it came from.”

“Perhaps that is wise,” Hannibal says, but it’s not dismissive and he’s still piercing Will with his gaze.

The welts and punctures under Will’s shirt begin to itch—the urge to scratch and peel them back is almost violent, and it scares Will into pushing himself up and returning to stand in front of the sword. He’s surprised when Hannibal doesn’t allow him the distance but instead follows him, coming to a halt beside him. Their shoulders brush.

He says, out of the blue, “You impressed a number of my companions at the art show.”

Will knows it’s rude, but he can’t hold back his snort. “Is that what they told you?”

Hannibal is gracious and ignores him, reaching out to caress the dull edge of the sword’s blade. “They expressed a desire to meet you again.”

Will is utterly bewildered. “They want another look at the savage?”

This time Hannibal frowns at him. Will ducks his head. Without thought he copies Hannibal, extending a hand to run his fingers down the other side of the sword. It’s not a conscious apology but Hannibal withdraws his stern look.

“I will be hosting a dinner party at my home in two weeks,” he says. “If you are available, I’d be gratified to see you there.”

Will figures he’s a little beyond deliberating at this point. “You’ll see me there.”

=

When Will gets home, he goes straight to the upstairs linen closet.

It’s rarely used. Will keeps the majority of his sheets downstairs underneath his bed, within easy reach. The knob of the closet door is dusty, and Will has to pull hard to wedge it open. It creaks—he reminds himself to take a look at the hinges.

The shelves built into the closet are mostly empty—a few boxed bars of soap, an extra shower curtain, an old stereo he forgot to fix, a Milwaukee circular saw, and not much else. On a hanger balanced precariously on the lip of the top shelf is his father’s old suit.

Will is transported back a few decades to Memphis. He remembers his father coming home with the suit, the cloth almost radiant in their dingy one-bedroom shack. In all the years that his father bled himself to keep them afloat, it was his one indulgence. It was his pride.

The first thing Will did when he switched to his FBI salary was get it touched up. The second thing he did was save up for a house.

It’s a vintage Cricketeer suit with a notched lapel and single-breasted waistcoat, cut from gray twill fabric with red windowpane and held together with tortoiseshell buttons. Will still has the tie his father bought for it.

It’s probably worth less than one of Hannibal’s shoes, but Will takes it off the shelf and puts it in a travel bag to take to the cleaner’s.

=

Alana catches him dry-swallowing a few pills in the Academy halls and buys him several water bottles from the vending machine with explicit instructions to start keeping one on him at all times. Will gets a dehydration headache right before his first lecture and ends up drinking them all at once. His bladder makes itself known before the class is over.

When the stampede of students is past, he darts into the men’s bathroom and relieves himself, glancing away from the mirror as he washes his hands. He returns to his classroom still wiping his palms on his pants.

He halts in front of his desk.

There’s a leaf on his grading papers.

He frowns. It wasn’t there when he left and his classroom is windowless. He can’t tell if he’s hallucinating or not. “My name is Will Graham,” he starts, but he ends up digging through his pocket for his phone. Belatedly he thinks to check the time on his watch and see whether or not the ringtone will take him to the answering machine, but Hannibal picks up after the third ring.

“Will,” Hannibal greets.

“It might not be just a crossed wire in my mind,” Will tells him.

“Have you been threatened?” Hannibal asks him. His voice is very serious.

Will looks at the leaf and realizes that, out loud, he’ll sound ridiculous. “I don’t know,” he says, an untruth. “I just…got a feeling.”

Hannibal seems to debate whether or not to address his lie. Eventually he says, “Will you tell Jack?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Will says. “A feeling isn’t evidence. I won’t waste his time.”

Will can almost hear the _your safety is worth his time_ and the _don’t discount your feelings_ coming. Instead Hannibal just sighs. “Do you believe you are currently in danger?”

Will looks around, deep in the Academy. “No.”

Very intently Hannibal asks him, “Will, are you afraid?”

 _I’m always afraid_ is what Will almost says, but he doesn’t want to admit that in his empty classroom. “Not yet,” he says.

Hannibal tells him, “I hope that you won’t have to be.”

=

Will wakes up to the cool, rough insistence of Winston licking his face. He gently pushes Winston’s muzzle away and sits up in bed, knuckling the grit out of his eyes. He sees the bloody dog sitting upright in the middle of the living room and staring at the front door, and that’s when he realizes someone is knocking.

Jack doesn’t react much to the sight of Will opening the door in just his damp shirt and underwear; he merely looks tired. “I definitely didn’t need this right now.”

Will blearily infers. “The Ripper.”

He snatches on some pants and a shirt and gets in Jack’s car, washing the taste of sleep out of his mouth with a sip of the coffee Jack hands him wordlessly. The drive is mostly silent, Jack gripping the steering wheel with both hands and Will leaning his forehead against the frosted window pane.

Jack breaks the quiet to ask him one thing. “Can you look?”

Will nods. “I can look.”

They travel to the northeastern corner of Baltimore, stopping in Taylor Heights. There’s not much to see—lots of squatting, Depression-era houses and some scruffy row housing. Jack takes them to an abandoned building close to Parkwood Cemetery, where police are holding back a crowd of people largely still in their pajamas. He flashes his badge and two officers move the barrier for them, and then they’re parking next to the squad cars and cutting off the civilians’ view with the SUV’s bulk.

Will keeps Jack between him and the crowd as they walk up to the building. Up close he realizes that it used to be a school, one of those one-room brick huts that get preserved as historical monuments. The police tape is rolled back for them and they step inside.

The victim is a gaunt man with a slight rash around his nose—frequent use of inhalants, occasional use of something harder—and the valet uniform hanging off his lean frame is stained with blood. He’s lashed to a chair at the very top of the schoolroom, seated where the teacher’s desk would be if the room still had furniture. There’s an officer in the corner holding his sleeve across his mouth. Jack asks for him to be escorted out, and then he nudges Will forward.

Up close the body is disturbing. The eyelids have been surgically removed. The broken jaw hangs off its hinges, and dried candle wax pours from the wide open mouth. The hands have been impaled with plain white candle sticks. Will is revolted and strangely compelled.

When he closes his eyes he’s numbed with the Ripper’s familiar indifference, but just like the last time it’s marred by a word. “This is a _vigil_ ,” he mutters to himself. This man has been transformed into an eternal sentry. His lidless eyes will see everything—the candles in his hands promise watchfulness even in the dark.

And Will, who has been keeping his lamp on every night for the last week, feels himself relax.

“Get anything?” Jack says without hope.

“No,” Will says, but that’s not right.

=

Will wakes five times in the night, and each time he sees the stag looming outside his window.

=

Will gets ready at Beverly’s place. She picked up his father’s suit for him while he was indisposed with a day cold and kept it at her apartment to protect it from wayward dog hair—on the day of the dinner party she holds it hostage and tells him to come over so she can supervise his preparations. Will feels uncomfortable in someone else’s shower, but Beverly uses scentless, generic bar soap and her roommate has a selection of cologne, so he allows it. She’s closer to Baltimore anyway.

Will gets dressed in Beverly’s bedroom. She and her roommate applaud when he walks out, and Beverly says, “Maybe you have a chance of surviving the night after all.”

Will gets in his car and puts on Hannibal’s jacket and gloves and maybe starts to believe it.

The afternoon has deepened to evening by the time Will gets to Hannibal’s neighborhood. He saves himself a lot of embarrassment and parks down the street, huddling in his coat as he walks to Hannibal’s house, shoes clicking on the pavement. He’s almost on Hannibal’s front stoop when the sounds of the soiree reach him through the door. Faintly, he can hear what might be Mahler or Vivaldi—he has no ear for classical—and the low murmur of conversation. He sighs and rings the bell.

The door opens promptly. Backlit by the candelabra on wall-mounted tables in the foyer, Hannibal looks like a knife in his black suit, his pale gold waistcoat and tie a gleam on a razor.

“Evening,” Will volunteers. He can guess what he looks like—curls wild from air-drying, face wind-whipped and glowing from the cold, eyes very blue against Hannibal’s dark jacket. After a beat he raises his gloved hand to tuck some hair away from his forehead.

The darkness behind Hannibal’s eyes is endless. “Good evening, Will. Please come in.”

Will steps into the foyer and lets Hannibal take his things. He’s not looking at Hannibal when the coat comes off but there’s the slightest pause when the entirety of his suit is revealed and it makes the back of his neck heat up. The hairs there lift when he feels Hannibal step in close and inhale.

“That’s a handsome scent, Will,” he murmurs. “What is it?”

Will breathes out a laugh, hyperaware of their proximity. “A man needs some mystery.”

Hannibal withdraws and steps around him. “Keep your secrets then,” he says, mouth quirked, gesturing toward the lounge. “If you’ll step this way.”

The other guests are in there, two men and six women in elegant eveningwear holding glasses of, Will doesn’t doubt, a truly extraordinary vintage. Conversation pauses as Hannibal and Will enter the room.

“You remember my friend Will Graham,” Hannibal announces. “He’ll be joining us for dinner.”

There’s a polite hum of greeting and then Hannibal is taking him around to conduct re-introductions. Though Lindsey Chambers shakes his hand with the tips of her fingers, her _you’re lovely tonight, my dear_ is genuine. Her companion, Yvonne Sharifi, grasps his shoulders like a friend, her kitenge vibrant next to his gray suit. Will doesn’t remember them, but they’re nice.

Phuong Vu seems somewhat familiar, shorter than Will and slender as a reed with a handshake that almost pulls him off his feet. Will definitely remembers Manuel Ferranti—the uppity pinch in his brow was distinctive even at the art show.

Ida Patel almost doesn’t come up to Will’s chest, fairy-like in her Rohit Bal sari, but her voice is startling throaty when she inquires after his health. Annam Ganim offers him a pretty smile framed by her pale hijab. Benita Navarro takes his hand in both of hers and tells him _glad you could make it_ with sincerity. Will is tired by the time he greets Tiffani Zheng, but her _get the man a drink_ is refreshing and he’s impressed by the way Hannibal listens.

“Have I exhausted you?” he asks Will on the side, pressing a glass into his hand. Their fingers lace briefly.

Will clears his throat and assures him, “I’ll get my second wind.”

The conversation resumes and Hannibal begins drifting between his guests attentively. Will trails him at first, making an effort not to follow his immediate impulse and hunch anti-socially against the wall. He observes Hannibal in silence as he answers questions about his practice, his meals, his décor. He’s experienced Hannibal’s solid psychiatry and his zealous cooking, but his charming hospitality is still something to behold. He’s reminded of his dogs licking the bloody dog’s muzzle.

Eventually, however, Hannibal has to duck into the kitchen to check on the two caterers he hired to assist with the party, and Will is forced to fend for himself.

His first hurdle comes in the form of Mrs. Zheng, who sidles up to him where he stands next to a reproduction of Ferrier’s _Ganymede_. “Tell me you didn’t have a hand in all this.” She gestures toward the long spears of twin mounted gazelle horns, the mobile of shark teeth, the gypsum relief of _Ashurbanipal Hunting Lions_.

Will’s lips twitch. “This is all Hannibal.”

“Do try to talk him out of some of it next time,” she begs, smiling.

“I can’t imagine Hannibal doing anything he doesn’t want to,” he says truthfully.

She winks. “I’m sure you have your ways.” With that she disappears, too quickly for Will to correct her. His neck burns for a whole minute.

He retreats to one of the room’s white leather couches, and then it’s Mrs. Ganim lowering herself slowly down next to him, one hand on her pregnant belly. She’s the only one here younger than Will. “Hannibal has acquaintances and colleagues,” she muses, soft-spoken. “I’ve never met one of his friends.”

Will sips his wine while he tries to figure out what to say to that. She fills the pause by adding, “How did you meet?”

Will coughs. “I consult him about work.”

“Oh,” she says, and gives him another sweet smile. “I imagine he’s full of suggestions. He does have a dynamic mind.”

“He can keep up,” Will agrees. He realizes how haughty, how playful, how intimate he sounds when Mrs. Ganim smothers a chuckle.

“I try,” Hannibal says, suddenly close to them in that soundless way of his. “Dear Will can run circles around me on a good day.”

“Keep hamming it up,” Will mutters into his glass, and only notices how many people are paying attention when the whole room laughs.

Hannibal informs them that dinner is ready and facilitates the move from lounge to dining room. The chandelier casts a funneled glow on the table that makes it look, for an instant, infinite. Then Hannibal goes around pulling out chairs and it collapses back into a ten-seat thing draped with a pale paisley cloth that matches Hannibal’s gold waistcoat.

Will sits at the right of the head.

Dinner has six courses. Hannibal serves them all personally, wheeling out their first amuse-bouche: butter-poached lobster with lemongrass and curry. It’s expertly done—Will has never had seafood melt in his mouth before. Hannibal asks the table at large how it is, but he’s looking at Will.

“I like it,” Will says simply. He thinks Hannibal smiles.

Next is veal cheek over petite potato rosti. Will is wary, but Mrs. Sharifi at his side warns him, “You’ll break Hannibal’s heart, child.”

“I am sturdier than that,” Hannibal promises. “Feel free to skip whatever you’re not convinced by, Will.” He is visibly pleased when Will takes a bite.

There’s an intermezzo, a palate cleanser—Hannibal puts small shots of apple brandy down for them, substituting it with apple sorbet for Mrs. Ganim. It goes down warm and helps Will release some of the tension that comes with sitting across from the dour Mr. Ferranti.

The tension snaps back when Hannibal leaves for the next course, however, Mr. Ferranti taking the interlude to address Will down his nose. “You’re a teacher, you said?”

“An instructor at the FBI Academy,” Will confirms.

“I’ve heard about you,” Mr. Ferranti says, but it’s not complimentary. “Your name pops up in some unsavory places.”

Will can guess what places. He shrugs. “You can’t trust everything you read on the internet.”

Hannibal returns then, and Will remembers that he’s trying to be civil to Hannibal’s guests. He eats the miso soup with tofu and wakame meekly and attempts to respond in full sentences to Ms. Navarro’s polite inquiries about his pastimes.

The rest of the meal goes smoothly. The main course is beef tenderloin stuffed with sun-dried tomato and pine nuts. Hannibal stops refilling wine glasses after he brings out the salmon wrapped in puffed pastries with watercress mousse. Dinner ends with a petit four—blackcurrant pastilles that help Will shake off some of his food-induced lethargy and go with Hannibal to show the guests out.

Mrs. Chambers tells him _you were a doll_ as she leaves, and he gets another embrace from Mrs. Sharifi. Dr. Vu extracts a promise from him to donate some of his fishing secrets. Mr. Ferranti manages a nod. Ms. Patel promises to read some of the articles he’s published, and Ms. Navarro suggests a nearby dog park to him. Will tells Mrs. Ganim to stay healthy. Mrs. Zheng points meaningfully at the Bosch hanging in the hall and tells them both to have a good night.

When they’re alone, Hannibal says, “Thank you, Will. I understand that you and I have enjoy different pursuits. I’m grateful you came.”

“It was really good,” Will replies. His stomach is pleasantly heavy. He thinks he’s glad he came too.

“It’s late,” Hannibal remarks, “but you are welcome to stay for more wine.”

Will considers it. “Let me help you clean up and I’ll stay.”

Hannibal fusses but eventually accepts his terms. Between the both of them and the two caterers, the collateral damage from the dinner party is swiftly cleared away. Hannibal walks the hired help to the door and Will uses the opportunity to pour them another glass and carry it boldly to the study. He takes initiative and gets a fire going, shedding his suit jacket as he settles into a chair by the hearth. He relaxes when Hannibal finds him and doesn’t look displeased.

“Thank you, Will,” he says again, grabbing his glass and taking the seat closest to Will. The firelight throws half of his face into shadow and makes his eyes gleam the red of melted rock.

Will remembers the chasm from before. Languid with fullness and alcohol, he decides to see what’s at the bottom.

“Have you hunted before?” he asks, a non sequitur.  

Hannibal slips out of his jacket too and nods, admitting, “It’s been a long time since I’ve hunted animals.”

Will automatically thinks of Hobbs and his cabin, impressively decorated with the racks of his kills, but he knows intuitively that Hannibal would be the better huntsman by far.

Hannibal closes his eyes as he brings his glass to his nose and adds, “I always preferred big game.”

Even without his suit jacket Hannibal still looks like a blade. “What’s the thrill?” Will asks.

Hannibal turns his face into the fire to consider. “Everything is greater—the risk, the chase, the kill.”

“An adrenaline junkie,” Will says dryly. “Never would have guessed.”

One corner of Hannibal’s mouth tugs up. “A man needs some mystery.”

Will covers his smile with his shoulder. “Were you good?”

Hannibal’s eyes are stained glass. “I have never lost a hunt.”

“That’s a big claim,” Will says. The challenge in the words is friendly—it’s flirtatious, he realizes, stunned. “What made you so good a predator?”

Hannibal sips his wine. He says easily, “I can smell fear.”

When Will’s glass is drained, Hannibal makes him a coffee for the drive home, escorting Will to the door and retrieving his things for him. Will holds his arms out as Hannibal helps him into the sleeves—he can feel Hannibal bowing his head to inhale one last time.

“Wear that again,” he requests, though it hits Will’s stomach like a command.

He has no idea what brand it is. “Okay,” he says.

While Will is slipping his gloves on, Hannibal takes a scarf down from a coat hook and steps in close to wrap it around his neck. “It’s much chillier out now,” he explains. “You’ll need this.”

It smells like Hannibal’s own tasteful cologne. Without thinking Will dips his head and rubs his prickly cheek against the silk. “I’ll give it back,” he promises. “Sorry in advance—it’ll smell like me.”

The darkness behind Hannibal’s eyes is endless.

=

Will turns on his shower but doesn’t immediately get in. He stands on the bathmat and scratches his fingernails through the line of hair that bisects his belly over and over again until he’s sure that the erection lying half-hard along his thigh won’t wither. When his mirror begins to sweat with the steam rising in the room, he steps under the showerhead and sucks in a breath at how the water beats down on his cock.

This time it’s much easier to lather up his hands and soap himself thoroughly, one forearm braced on the tile wall and one hand working between his thighs. He’s panting by the time he rinses himself, and anticipation makes his fingers shake like caffeine jitters when he shuts off the faucet and gets out to towel off.

A random flash of memory has him rooting around in the cabinet under the sink and pulling out a barely used bottle of lube. It’s been a long time since he’s needed it close—he’d forgotten that he’d stashed it there. He clutches it in a trembling fist and takes it to the upstairs bedroom.

He’s still damp in places but he spreads himself out on the bed anyway, wet curls soaking the mattress and leaving it cold beneath his neck. The house heater is on and making the walls creak, and under the rusty gust of warm air his nipples pebble and his cock twitches and he feels a great deal more ready than he did the last time.

The lube is warm from his palm. He slicks both hands with it, heedless of the mess, and starts pumping himself, shuddering at the hot, wet tunnel of his fist. He brings the other down to rub at his opening and bites his lip at how fast his erection fills out.

He strokes his hole until his belly tightens and his legs spread automatically. Then he presses a finger inside.

His back leaves the bed.

It’s tight and uncomfortable and makes his cock leak down his hand. Tentatively he pulls out and thrusts back in, and at the groan it forces out of him he turns his face into the mattress and starts a rhythm in and out of himself. Sweat joins the shower water plastering his curls to his forehead.

He’s barely any looser when he pushes in a second digit, and the pressure and the twinge make his teeth clench. He has to force the third alongside the other two, the lube thinning and tacky on his hand—he feels stuffed and hurt even on his slender fingers, and the thought of bigger fingers—surgeon, artist, musician fingers—brings him abruptly close to climax.

He jerks himself until he feels dry and raw, but he can’t find release, not even when he retrieves the image of being held down tight. He tries to get deeper but the angle kills his wrist, so he rolls onto his stomach and does it like that.

He imagines feeling that weight and intention from behind and ends up peaking so hard the mattress can’t smother his shout.

=

Will sits in the back of a Hungarian bakery with his laptop open and the remains of a few demolished poppyseed hamentaschen on the table in front of him. Manhattan is twenty degrees colder than home and already under a foot of snow—he’ll be glad to leave it tomorrow when they wrap up things with NYPD. In the meantime he’s editing material for Monday’s lecture, a presentation on a Santa Fe serial killer who fashioned his kills after coyote attacks, and suffering looks for the pictures of strewn entrails visible on his screen.

The mess of the murders reminds Will of Occoquan, of what he told Hannibal that day during their picnic.

Everything Will has seen and done for his job has made thoughts of his own death largely trivial—he knows what he’d prefer if he could choose, but anything would be more preferable than Occoquan. Hobbs would be more preferable than Occoquan. At least Hobbs would do right by him, would use him for his own resourceful designs. Occoquan would leave him in the smear of meat and blood he killed him in.

Inadvertently Will thinks about what Hannibal could do with his meat and blood.

Hannibal has fed him cuts he’d never even heard of before, made dinners of marrow and organs and body parts beyond Will’s scope of knowledge. He could probably turn Will’s booze-pickled innards and tough muscle into a gourmand’s dream, though he’s too careful with his diet to ever eat Will himself. Will is shaken to the core by his own disappointment.

He orders another coffee and keeps editing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am incapable, down to the atomic level, of identifying cars, so I just had Will drive what he drives in Red Dragon.
> 
> I've never been to the Hotel Monaco; I just creeped on internet pictures and hoped for the best. I have also never been to an art show; I just creeped on internet pictures and hoped for the best. Also never been to Virginia, Maryland or basically any other location mentioned here. There was a lot of hoping for the best.
> 
> I was lazy and fell onto the well-worn track of demonizing the elite. Apologies.
> 
> Beverly calling Will 'champ' is my lifeblood.
> 
> I know everyone and their mothers uses some rendering of Ganymede but it's too good.


	3. We Are But One

Will keeps his eyes on his lectern as he teaches. He describes a 1978 case in which the premature gendering of a killer mislead an investigation, delayed arrest, and cost Seattle families five more child funerals. His last online prompt involved submitting an analysis of a reconstruction of one of the killer’s crime scenes, and he was disconcerted to find that a number of his students made the same mistake. He makes examples of several of their responses as he lectures.

The students are subdued when they leave. Will doesn’t anticipate anyone staying after for discussion. He’s somewhere between surprised and resigned when the big student stalks up to his desk.

“Now you’re mocking me publically?” he says.

Will finds that intolerably dramatic. “You flatter yourself. I mocked a lot of people publically.” He shrugs. “It’s part of the learning process.”

“I didn’t hear anyone else’s paper being trashed,” the student seethes.

Will snorts. “It was anonymous.” It’s afternoon, the end of his school day, and he’s ready to go home. “This is the fourth time you’ve been confrontational—if you won’t air your grievances with the department, I’ll air mine.” He turns to gather his things, showing his back dismissively.

“Graham,” the student growls behind him. Will pauses.

By the time he turns back around, the student is already heading for the door, his hulking form swollen with anger. The door slams behind him, shut too hard, and Will doesn’t move until the echo of the bang settles.

=

The end of fall makes the dusk quick. The sky burns for a short half hour and then the cold night smothers it to black. Beverly shows up right before the last red rays disappear behind the trees, heavy under the burden of a battered box, making his porch stairs creak when she climbs them to knock on his door.

She called earlier asking if she could bring his pack a gift, and Will was flattered enough on their behalf to agree. He only recalls that he isn’t a practiced host after he makes a completely underwhelming meal of pork chops with southern-baked macaroni and cheese, though she didn’t specify whether she was staying to eat. He finds himself unaccountably nervous as he answers the door.

“Smells good in here,” she says when he lets her in. “You made food? Thank god, I’m starving.”

They take their plates to the armchairs in front of the fireplace. The dogs crowd around the box while Beverly rifles through the various toys she inherited when her sister gave away her dog and moved to Greece. “No pets allowed in the apartment,” she explains. “I thought they’d have a happier home here.”

“You thought right,” Will says, watching Buster eye a chewed-up Frisbee.

He already let the dogs out for a romp but they’ve been riled up by Beverly’s animated belly-rubs and the scents from the box. He and Beverly pull on their coats and take them outside, bringing along the toys that were met with the most enthusiasm. Will makes them hot chocolate with tiny crumbly marshmallows from cheap supermarket powder and endures the ribbing he gets with great patience.

All of the dogs tear into the toys except for the bloody dog, which prowls across the porch to sprawl at Will’s feet. Beverly notices it for the first time.

“Who’s this?” she asks.

Absently Will reaches down to pet it. “The one who gave me those scratches.”

“Feisty,” Beverly remarks. “And huge. That’s a big dog, Will.” Her expression turns sly. “You really found yourself an alpha.”

Will tunes her out with a squeaky toy.

They go inside when their hot chocolate is mere silt in the bottom of their mugs. Will is making an effort and hanging up their jackets when Beverly sees Hannibal’s and whistles.

She picks it up. “And whose is this?”

Will flushes and knows what he’s bringing upon himself. “It’s from Dr. Lecter.”

For a moment Beverly is silent and Will thinks she might be searching within herself for the maturity to leave it be. Then she turns to him with a grin that could cut glass. “That’s more like it.”

=

The day is crisp and cloudless. Will borrows Donavan’s johnboat and spends the morning on the small lake in the opposite direction of his preferred stream. The direct sunlight raises the temperature of the water and agitates the baitfish; Will drags a minnow lure through some weed cover and is rewarded with a bass big enough to provide both lunch and dinner.

As he sits in the boat with his rod between his knees, Winston curled up at the other end, he wonders if he could be a different predator. He’s been a fisherman since he was a boy—his father would prop him up against his chest and lay his big hands over Will’s tiny paws and show him patience until Will was big enough to haul something of his own onto the crooked boards of their aging dock. Will never learned hunting—his dad fished because he could do it with a beer in his other hand. Will wonders if he could be a hunter.

Occoquan made him realize that, in many ways, he’s more like prey. He wonders what kind of prey he is—the kind that can be lured, or the kind that must be chased.

Will wonders if he could outrun Hannibal.

=

Will is doing laundry when his phone chimes. He tries to hurry and gets detergent on his fingers—it’s on the last ring by the time he wipes his hand and answers with a disgruntled, “Graham.”

“I can call back,” Hannibal offers.

Will straightens. “No, it’s fine.” One-handed, he tosses a gratuitous amount of fabric sheets into his dryer. “I mean. Hello.” He winces.

There’s the barest gust of air against the receiver—Hannibal’s version of laughing at him, Will guesses. “I apologize in advance, but there is another favor I must ask of you.”

Will remembers standing in front of the tall Ferrier in Hannibal’s lounge and being unsubtly equated to the agonized, ecstatic boy in the black eagle’s talons. “You need a partner in crime?”

“ _Need_ is perhaps dishonest,” Hannibal admits. “I want a partner in crime.”

Will’s neck feels hot. “What kind of crime are we talking about?” He puts the detergent and sheets back on the shelf above the machines. “Highway robbery?” He adds, unenthused, “Tax evasion?”

“Murder,” Hannibal says.

Will fumbles his basket of clean clothes and has to pick up a few fallen socks. “That’s a pretty big favor.”

He can hear Hannibal’s mouth quirking. “I thought I would ask in any case.”

Will hadn’t mean _no_. “What would I have to do as an accomplice?”

The crinkle of paper and clink of glass on granite comes through the line. Will thinks Hannibal might be reading the honest-to-god newspaper, complete with a coffee and his stuffy robe. He knew the electronic tablet he’s seen around the study seemed incongruous.

“I’ve been asked to multiple events,” Hannibal explains, enumerating them—a flamenco performance starring world-renowned Eva Yerbabuena, Anthony Barrese’s reconstruction of Faccio’s opera _Amleto_ , and an Old World wine-tasting followed by a fondue dinner. “You need only keep me company.”

Will declines the flamenco performance with regret—his Spanish has atrophied from disuse, and he knows he’ll be bothered by the half-comprehension. He declines the opera unrepentantly. Cautiously he accepts the wine-tasting and dinner. “Why do you want my company?” he asks, realizing afterward how much it sounds like fishing. “Won’t your friends be there?” he tries to fix it, realizing afterward how much it sounds like a jab. He stops talking.

There’s another gust of air. “You are good company, Will.”

Will tosses his clothes onto the armchair by his bed. “Only by comparison.” He freezes, mortified by his own rudeness.

Hannibal assures him with frankness, “I found many of my acquaintances dull even before I met you.”

Will’s neck is burning. He’s distantly flattered, and so discomfited by the feeling that he blurts, “Well, they’re not big game.”

Hannibal pauses. Will considers ending the call before he can do more damage. Then he hears Hannibal’s mouth quirk again as he agrees, “No, they are not.”

Will doesn’t trust himself. He folds his underwear and doesn’t speak.

Hannibal sounds like he’s shrugging as he continues, “They make particularly poor prey.”

Will wonders what constitutes good prey, and answers his own question—a high risk, a good chase, a hard kill. Tangentially he asks, “What’s the longest something’s survived you?”

Hannibal says, “Never through the night.”

Will slides his clean clothes into his drawers. Then he says, “I’ll try to last the evening.”

He can feel the chasm through the call.

=

Will loses track of time. It takes Rusty shoving his face into Will’s crotch for him to look up from his battered copy of _Odd Thomas_ and realize that it’s after ten and he hasn’t let the dogs out for their pre-bed walk. He apologizes to the pack, tugs on one of his old coats, and ushers everyone out the front door with a last look at the book where he leaves it on his chair.

Angus makes his circuit around the house, pissing at the edges of the yard. Dakota and Will tug on opposite ends of a knotted rope. The bloody dog dashes off and disappears into the dark. Will takes a seat on the porch with an air bazooka and shoots tennis balls across the lawn for the rest of the dogs to chase after, glancing at his watch and deciding to let play time stretch on.

He pauses the game to check his phone and notices a text from Beverly. She sent him a picture message of herself at the mall, standing in front of a store comprised almost entirely of flannel, and the text after it says _these are your people._ He’s ready to reluctantly smile before he sees the new scratches that her shirt doesn’t cover up, and then his thoughts are waylaid.

He shoots the ball for his dogs until his arm gets tired, throwing them some toys from the box to tussle over while he lets his head drop back against his chair, trying to forget the pink new skin of the healed scratches at his own neck. His eyelids begin to droop, though sleep wasn’t his intention, and before he can rouse himself and herd the pack back inside he slips into a doze.

He has another hazy, gossamer almost-dream. The stag coagulates in the darkness beyond his driveway, and Will’s dogs part for it as it walks through them into the light. It steps onto the porch, wooden boards splintering under its hooves, and comes to a halt in front of Will where he sits, its hot breath hitting Will in the face. Suddenly Will is too warm for his shirt, burning up until he tears free of the fabric, and when he is bare the stag dips its head and drags its tines down his skin, gouging him until he looks like a tilled field, all bloody furrows ready to be seeded.

When Will jerks awake, clutching his chest, he’s not on his porch.

He’s in the middle of one of the roads he has to take to get to his isolated island of a farmhouse, still familiarly within Wolf Trap but a good two miles out from his home. His shoulders are quaking, jacket nowhere in sight, and his bare feet feel raw. He sleepwalked. The headache hits him then—he crushes the heels of his hands into his eyes and tries to fight intense vertigo.

“Fuck,” he whispers, and he’s echoed by a growl.

He takes his hands away and sees a dog creeping toward him, belly low to the ground and lips pulled back. It’s clearly a stray, filthy and hostile from feral living. For a moment all Will can see in the spare light of the single streetlamp is the glint of bared teeth, and then a passing shadow as it attacks.

Distantly Will anticipates a bite to the throat—he’s disoriented and in stupor and his limbs won’t obey the command to move. He doesn’t anticipate the bloody dog knocking the other dog to the ground and sinking its teeth into its face.

The other dog kicks it off and then scampers away, baying in pain. Will watches it run until he can’t see it through the night, turning when the bloody dog trots back to him with its muzzle dripping. It spits a chewed-off ear at Will’s feet before whining and lying down on the asphalt.

Will carries it the two miles back to the house. The skin on his soles is screaming by the time he reaches the porch, the rest of his dogs crowding him through the door. He calms them and whistles for them to bed down and then he takes the bloody dog to the bathroom and sets it gently in the tub.

It has long welts down its belly where the other dog clawed it away. Will runs some water over a washcloth and gets as far as washing the dirt from the wounds before Winston squeezes through the crack in the door and joins him at the tub.

With a hand on its belly, Will can feel the bloody dog’s low rumble as Winston licks the blood from its mouth.

=

According to Hannibal, the wine-tasting and fondue dinner is a casual affair—he answers in the affirmative when Will asks if he can dress down for the evening. If there’s a pause before his collected _indeed,_ Will deliberately does not remember it.

The only person Will tells about it is Beverly, but a week later Alana gives him a bag filled with clothes that her youngest sibling, a senior undergraduate doing pre-med at Columbia with a concentration in sports therapy, has grown out of. Will tries to give it back, telling her he’s heard every Goodwill pun in the book, but she insists with all the obstinacy that saw her through a childhood sandwiched between two older and two younger brothers. Will is an only child; he capitulates in short time. When he asks if it’s about the dinner, Alana assures him it’s pure coincidence.

Will ends up choosing something to wear from the bag anyway, Beverly’s stipulation in exchange for the use of her roommate’s cologne. He feels distinctly old tugging on a college kid’s clothes, but the fit is a lot more flattering than what he stows in his own closet. He leaves the house in expensive jeans and a pale cardigan, uncomfortable until he puts on Hannibal’s jacket and gloves and scarf.

The wine-tasting is at the Old Brick Inn, a restored colonial house utterly surprising in its coziness. The drive is long but Will decides that the simple venue is worth it—it’s the first place Hannibal has invited him to that puts him at ease. He arrives just before sundown, just as the mellowing light strikes the orange brick front.

Hannibal is waiting for him outside. Will has seen him in his house slippers but somehow he looks even more informal in slacks and a sweater under his long coat. The sun is behind Will, so he sees the micro-expression that darts across Hannibal’s face as he watches Will walk up—traitorously, his neck heats.

“Hello, Will,” Hannibal greets. Then he steps in closer, head dipping to put his nose near Will’s throat, and breaths in. He looks very pleased when he pulls back, leaving Will almost too warm for his jacket. “Shall we?”

He ushers Will ahead of him into the inn. A young woman offers them a smile and takes their things, and then they head into a renovated ballroom typically used a breakfast room, tonight set up for the tasting. Two walls are lined with stacked barrels, giant clusters of fresh white and purple grapes hanging from the casks, and another is lined with cloth-draped tables piled with a variety of cheese and crackers. The majority of the floor is taken up by several stations manned by attendants and bearing bottles upon bottles of wine, and the guests milling around them fill the remainder of the space.

Will is tempted to be overwhelmed, but Hannibal puts a hand on his elbow and guides him serenely into the throng.

Hannibal moves through the room with omniscience, and he shares his vast knowledge with Will as they go around the stations. He tells Will about the tasting flight, pointing out wines and teaching him their history—luxury sparkling Ferrari Brut Rosé the color of salmon, Falanghina Greco in the style of ancient Rome’s Falernian wine, Rocca delle Macie Sasyr of sangiovese and syrah blend—a torrent of information that Will tries to absorb but can’t with Hannibal’s mouth so close to his ear.

He hands glasses to Will and reminds him continually of the process. “Look first, Will. See the color.” He holds every glass up at an angle. “Swirl it, gently, to release the bouquet.” He makes the wine arch against the glass. “Smell it—anticipate its flavor.” He closes his eyes while he inhales. “Sip unhurriedly.” His lips purse, and he drinks only slowly. “Savor.” He looks Will in the eyes as he lets the wine rest on his tongue.

Expectoration helps drain some of the flush that rises in Will’s face at each lesson, but not much.

Hannibal introduces him to a few people around the event. Will feels a little pleasure at running into Mrs. Zheng again in front of the raspberry ale cheese, even though she says _where is Zeus, wine-bearer_ when she sees him, and significantly less pleasure at glimpsing Manuel Ferranti through the crowd. He’s unimpressed with the rest of Hannibal’s acquaintances, and admits so when Hannibal asks.

He looks amused at Will’s honesty. “You understand why I wanted an accomplice.” When Will nods, he asks, “None of them?”

Will amends, “I like Mrs. Zheng.” They’ve had about twenty wines and even with the spitting Will feels a bit light in the head, which is why he adds in a fit of black humor, “She would last until midnight at least.”

Hannibal’s eyes gets so dark Will thinks he might fall in.

They continue their slow meander around the room. The hand that Hannibal kept at his elbow gravitates up to the back of Will’s neck, where he can most likely feel the heat of Will’s flush against his palm. It stays there until the tasting is over.

They retrieve their things from the clerk at the front and exit the inn, the evening now purple and cold. The brisk air clears Will’s head but the place where Hannibal grips him remains warm. Will bows his head, though Hannibal exerts no pressure, and he lets himself be led as they make their way on foot to dinner.

When they arrive at the restaurant Hannibal releases Will and stops him outside the doors. Will droops. “Are you enjoying yourself?” Hannibal asks.

“I am.” In truth the majority of the wines had tasted the same to his uncultured palate, but watching Hannibal devote himself to each glass had been fulfilling in its own way.

“Good,” Hannibal says. “Because I fear the rest might be less to your liking.”

Will frowns. “What do you mean?”

“We’ll be sharing a table,” Hannibal elaborates.

“Oh.” Will looks down and picks at the seams of his gloves. “I guess that means being sociable.”

He holds his breath when Hannibal stops his fiddling by taking him by his wrists and brushing his palms with his thumbs. He says, “I’ll spare you as I can.”

They go inside. A server intercepts them in the entryway. Hannibal gives their reservation name as ‘Ferranti’ and Will’s mood sours further. He says nothing as they’re lead to their table, where Mr. Ferranti is already seated; he simply takes the seat next to Hannibal on the other side of the square table.

Hannibal gestures at the empty seat. “Who are we missing?”

“My son,” Mr. Ferranti says. “He’ll join us later.”

They order, starting with a fondue of fontina with tomato pesto. Hannibal dips pieces of the artisan bread for Will, letting his arm come between Will and Mr. Ferranti so that he can captain the conversation. Will is not a prideful man—he eats his fondue gratefully.

Next is a caprese salad with mozzarella and strawberries; Will serves himself. Mr. Ferranti observes him from across the table.

“I was beginning to wonder if Mr. Graham had been taken by the tasting,” he says.

“Don’t worry, I’ve lost my buzz,” Will retorts before Hannibal can interject with something placating. He admits his pettiness but doesn’t much regret it. Hannibal navigates them back to still waters with a critical analysis of the wine selection, and there’s peace until the main entrees arrive.

Mr. Ferranti eats honeyed duck breast. Hannibal orders marinated sirloin with wild mushroom sacchetti, and to Will’s surprise puts it between them to share. He feels awkward and out of sorts digging his fork into the same plate as him—he hadn’t known Hannibal would suffer something like that. Then Hannibal’s tasteful cologne reaches his nose and he understands.

Dessert is a simple dark chocolate fondue with a plate of fresh fruit for dipping. Hannibal excuses himself to the restroom before it arrives, and Will, exposed, dunks banana chunks forlornly and waits for the inevitable.

“It’s been a long time since Hannibal has shown out with an escort,” Mr. Ferranti begins.

Will thinks about being offended and decides it’s a lot of effort—smartassery is much less work. “Really? You’ll have to introduce me.”

Mr. Ferranti sniffs and continues as though Will hadn’t spoken, “You’re the first charity case, however.”

“Believe me,” Will snorts, “I’m helping him out.”

Mr. Ferranti’s lips thin. “By licking the fingers of the hand that feeds you?”

Will resents that for possibly the wrong reasons. “Are you asking to trade places?”

He can tell that that one rankled. Through his teeth, Mr. Ferranti says, “Some of us have no need to prostitute ourselves for fondue.”

“Excuse me,” Will says, standing abruptly. His chair gives an ugly squeak as it grinds backward. “Guess the tasting did get to me.”

He walks quickly to the toilet. He meant to hold out much longer—he’s usually thick-skinned—but Mr. Ferranti is as astute as he is unbearable, and the insinuation of Hannibal’s pity felt like barbed wire. Will shoulders open the door to the men’s room and goes directly to the sink, flicking the faucet on and stopping the drain. He waits until basin is full before bending over the counter and dunking his face in the cold water.

When he surfaces, Hannibal is standing behind him.

Will studies him in the mirror—his reflection doesn’t look particularly surprised to see him there. Will looks away to grab a few paper towels from the dispenser and wipe his face.

“Had enough of being sociable?” Hannibal asks.

Will shakes his head and offers a wan smile. “I’m still your accomplice.”

Hannibal ignores his attempt at levity. “I didn’t bring you here to suffer, Will.”

Will shrugs. “It’s not a big deal.”

Hannibal gets closer, until the front of his gray cashmere brushes the back of Will’s cardigan. “I don’t seem to have spared you much.” He dips his head, sudden like he can’t help it, and smells Will’s throat again. His eyes are stained glass when he meets Will’s in the mirror. “Shame on me.”

Will’s grip on the counter goes limp. He leans back into Hannibal and says, “I forgive you.”

Hannibal escorts him back to their table with a hand at his elbow again. Will keeps his head down until they reach their seats, and doesn’t notice the fourth person at their table until Hannibal says, with manufactured courtesy, “Your long lost son, Mr. Ferranti?”

Will looks up and starts. It’s the big student.

He looks just as startled to see Will, and immediately as put off. “Frankie Ferranti,” he answers sullenly. “Professor Graham.”

Will offers a sharp nod and takes a gulp of the glass Hannibal pours for him, hearing peripherally Mr. Ferranti explain that he _took the liberty of ordering a wine_. Discomfort pricks him from every angle; professionalism has never been his first aspiration but even he is uneasy about sitting across from someone he sees in class, someone whose papers he grades. Someone who’s sneered _agent reject_ at him.

Mr. Ferranti and his son trade rapid Italian for a moment, and Hannibal says lowly, “I remember him. Would you like to leave?”

Will looks at the dessert still on the table and thinks about Hannibal fending for him all night. “I can wait,” he says, taking another drink of wine. He decides that he’ll excuse himself for good in a few minutes. “Go ahead and eat.”

Hannibal and Frankie enjoy the last of the dessert at leisure. Hannibal is much better at steering clear of Mr. Ferranti’s caustic remarks, and dinner proceeds pleasantly. Neither Will nor Frankie say much; he can feel the student’s glare on him as he nurses his glass and keeps his head below the conversation.

The tension screwing Will’s spine straight starts to subside as he grows increasingly languorous from the new wine. He wants to leave before his ability to drive is impaired, so he tugs on the bottom of Hannibal’s sweater to get his attention.

“I think I’ll…” he starts to say, but his tongue gets rubbery in his mouth and he can’t make his lips form the rest. His eyelids flutter.

“Will?” Hannibal asks.

Will tries to motion that he’s alright and ends up slipping out of his chair, limbs boneless and uncooperative. He lies on the floor and watches the ceiling turn slowly above him until Hannibal stoops and fills his entire vision. He touches Will everywhere, feeling his heartbeat and checking his eyes and saying _Will_ as if from a great distance.

Will hears everyone through the gurgling distortion of underwater. Some people seated at the tables around them gasp and murmur. A server dashes over to them.  Mr. Ferranti says _Frankie, get the keys_ and tells Hannibal _I’ve brought my car, we can get him to the hospital_. Then Hannibal is sliding his arms around him and lifting with frightening strength, helping him to his feet.

Will’s knees refuse to support his weight—his body in general refuses to do much of anything. He tries to fist his hand in Hannibal’s sweater so he can steady himself but his fingers won’t respond. Nothing responds. He starts to fall back toward the floor until Hannibal catches him and without ceremony sweeps him up.

The restaurant spins around Will as he’s carried through it to the exit. Outside, the night air bites through his clothes and sinks teeth into whatever skin is bared. He tries to tell Hannibal he forgot their coats but even keeping his eyes open is becoming an act of willpower. The words don’t make it past his throat.

The parking lot lights blind him for a difficult half-minute and then he hears the doors of Mr. Ferranti’s big luxury car unlock—the roof shades Will as he’s lowered carefully onto the backseat. In the soft yellow glow of the ceiling fixture it’s even harder to cling to consciousness.

Hannibal leans in to secure him. Standing in the door behind him, Will sees Frankie raise one powerful hand. His tongue is too sluggish to give warning.

Frankie bashes Hannibal across the back of the head.

Hannibal falls across Will.

Mr. Ferranti closes the door.

The backseat light cuts out and so does Will.

=

When Will wakes up, he has a vicious headache and full-body nausea. He gags once. His skull feels too heavy for his needle-thin neck, and trying to raise his head makes the ache worsen and the bile rise burning from his stomach. He does it anyway, and squints through the pain and the dark to try and get an inkling of where he is.

His hands are cuffed behind his back, threaded around an exposed beam. His legs are crossed beneath him; unfolding them has renewed circulation prickling through the muscles. The loud crackle of his knees and the scuff of his shoe on concrete gives him an idea of the dimension—large—and the nature of the unlit room: a basement in the process of being remodeled, if the wet-chalk smell of plaster and scrape of fiberglass against his knuckles is anything to go by.

That’s all he can get for a moment—he’s tired from that stretch alone and lingering lethargy tries to send him back to sleep. He has to fight to stay awake.

When he’s no longer in danger of passing out, he ignores his training and takes a huge chance and breathes, “Hannibal.”

There’s no immediate response. Then he hears the rustle of fabric and Hannibal whispers, “Will.”

Will considers the situation. He can get himself out of the handcuffs quick but he has no light, no weapon, no strength, and no idea where the Ferrantis are.

“Are you bound?” he asks.

“Yes,” Hannibal says.

Will knocks his head lightly against the beam, frustrated. “How long have you been awake?”

“I was never unconscious, merely stunned,” Hannibal informs him. “I was still gathering my wits when they stowed us down here. That was perhaps two hours ago.”

Will sucks in a breath. “You know where we are?”

“Mr. Ferranti’s private home,” Hannibal says. “Likely in Potomac, from what I remember of the drive.”

Will feels adrenaline flood him and banish some of the lethargy. They let Hannibal gather clues—they’re going to kill them. His eyes have adjusted to the gloom of the basement; he can see the dark shape of Hannibal against the wall opposite him, leaning against the bare ribs of freshly installed studs.

Swallowing, he asks, “Any idea what they gave me?”

“I can’t be sure,” Hannibal admits. “How do you feel?”

Will tries to flex his fingers. “Weak.” An ugly chuckle breaks free and he lets his head hang. “I forgot to sip unhurriedly.”

It’s a poor attempt at humor but he’s comforted by the white scythe of Hannibal’s smile in the dark.

Without warning a light clicks on and Will flinches. He blinks away the spots in his vision and tries to look into the glare of the lampless bulb. Standing underneath it is Frankie Ferranti.

He looks big and brutish, hunching slightly under the low ceiling, but for the first time his perpetual grimace is twisted into a smile. Will wonders how long he’s been there, listening in the dark, and is glad he hadn’t done any thinking aloud.

“Professor,” Frankie greets, like at dinner but with glee. “Dr. Lecter.”

“Mr. Ferranti,” Hannibal returns. Will says nothing.

“This was as much a surprise to me as it must be for you,” Frankie admits. His eyes are on Will. “Dad said he had a present for me, but I had no idea.”

Will has already decided how to play this. He remains silent, letting his eyes wander the room. Next to Hannibal are an old washer and dryer waiting to be dumped, and on his other side is a tower of boxes draped in dust and cobwebs. The far wall is obscured by a sheet of plastic, but beyond it Will can just make out the blurry outlines of power tools and wooden beams. The last wall terminates in a staircase—the door at the top has a thin strip of light at the bottom.

Hannibal asks, “What kind of present are we?”

“You’re not part of the present,” Frankie says dismissively. “You’re just…the gift wrapping.”

“I understand,” Hannibal says. “What kind of present is Will?”

“A piss poor one.” Frankie wrinkles his nose. “Graham is a fucking prick. And a shit teacher. He’s the reason why they’re going to recycle me.” His face starts to get pink and the look he levels at Will turns venomous. “That’s six months of my life wasted because of you, you goddamn cunt.”

Will’s heard worse. He focuses on the door.

Frankie continues, “Who knows why they let you out into the field—you’re useless.” He sneers. “I thought you were supposed to be their bloodhound. You couldn’t even figure out the presents I left for _you_.”

Will’s skin breaks out in goosebumps as a chill wracks him. His suspicions since the leaf were confirmed the instant Frankie struck Hannibal, but the confession still drops a cold stone of terror into the pit of his stomach. The pictures of Reston and the scenes at Occoquan and Manassas flash before his eyes— _white male dark hair_ —and the bile is rising threateningly in his gullet again.

He keeps looking at the door.

“Pay attention,” Frankie hisses, and kicks Will in the chest.

Will doubles over as much as his bound arms allow and tries to breathe. Across from him, Hannibal protests sharply and tries to struggle. The moment Will’s ribs no longer feel like they’re creaking, he sits back up and returns his gaze to the door. Frankie is furious.

“Listen,” he says lowly. He gropes behind him for something, and when he turns back around he’s holding the end of a spiral-shaved drill bit. “I’m gonna do us all a favor and end you right here.” He looks at Hannibal. “It’s your fault too for letting your bitch run around sabotaging the rest of us—you’ll go next.” There’s a leer on his face, and when Will glances away from the door he can see in it unchanneled rage and improvised brutality and absolutely _no design at all_. Frankie promises, “You’ll make a better lesson dead than you ever did alive.”

Will prepares himself to slip the cuffs. With a thumb out of commission and his muscles unresponsive, he won’t get further than stalling Frankie a few moments, but he can’t save Hannibal with his hands behind his back and he thinks better on his feet anyway. Frankie takes a step forward and Will tenses.

Then he sees Hannibal rise up behind Frankie and goes limp.

Frankie catches the shock on Will’s face and spins around in time to meet Hannibal’s fist with his jaw. He staggers, stunned, shaking his head like a dog to clear it, and then retaliates, swinging a tree trunk of an arm—Hannibal dunks and Frankie roars when his fingers crunch against one of the bare studs.

Hannibal delivers three quick jabs to Frankie’s exposed ribs, skirting around him when he doubles over and putting some space between them. Frankie bares his teeth at him, incensed, and brandishes the drill bit. He rushes Hannibal like a charging mammoth.

Will’s heart is in his throat, but in the next second it’s over—Hannibal grabs Frankie’s wrist, drives the thrust meant for his face into one of the boxes behind him, and knocks the drill bit from Frankie’s hand into his own. He makes eye contact with Will as he drives the bit through Frankie’s neck.

Will looks right back.

Frankie hits the floor in a dead fall, blood welling up and overflowing from his open, gasping mouth. His fingers scrabble at his punctured throat; his legs twitch and the rest of him convulses, asphyxiating. Will sees it all in his peripheral vision; he’s not looking at him.

He’s not looking at the door either, which means he doesn’t see Mr. Ferranti stumbling down the steps clutching a handgun, only notices him when he shrieks, “ _Frankie_!”

The click of the safety is thunderous. The bang of the gunshot is deafening. Hannibal’s grunt is somehow even louder—the bullet tears apart the sleeve of his rumpled sweater as it rips open his upper arm, skimming his bicep. Will jerks in his bonds, lungs too tight for him to speak.

Hannibal moves fast like a predator and is on Mr. Ferranti before he can bring the gun up a second time. Mr. Ferranti is older and in hysterics; Hannibal knocks the gun away with ease. He grabs Mr. Ferranti and slams him against the wall once, twice—Will can see every muscle in his back—before letting his limp body sink to the concrete.

Hannibal’s shoulders heave with the great inhales he drags in noiselessly through his nose, but when he turns around he’s calm, with an even pulse beating in the vein slowly fading from relief in his neck. His left arm is dripping with blood from his wound. Other than the gash from the bullet, he’s unharmed.

He kneels before Will and slips something out of his pocket, reaching around to fiddle with the cuffs on Will’s wrist. Their faces are an inch apart. Hannibal’s eyes are a strange, disquieting maroon—Will looks through them like stained glass and sees the endless darkness, feels the chasm like a draft from a crack in a wall.

“You sprung the cuffs,” Will whispers, eyelashes tickled by ash brown strands of Hannibal’s hair. He needs a haircut. “Lied because he could hear.” He frowns. “How’d you—” He’s enlightened. “You smelled him in the dark.”

“Hush,” Hannibal says, and the cuffs slide off.

Will’s first obligation is to call Jack—they’ve been kidnapped, there are two bodies, there was a confession—but the moment his hands are free he curls his fingers around the fabric of Hannibal’s ruined sleeve and tugs it apart, baring the gash.

“Does it hurt?” he asks, shrugging out of his cardigan so he can fist his hands in Alana’s brother’s henley and shred it into strips.

“Very much,” Hannibal hums, trying to pin Will’s arms down and stop his fussing.

Will struggles out of his grip to mop up some of the wet blood on Hannibal’s skin and wrap his upper arm to staunch the bleeding. “You didn’t need an accomplice,” he chuckles, and it’s a fey laugh as his fingers get sticky and warm.

The hand on Hannibal’s good arm rises up to hold the back of Will’s neck. “I only wanted your company.”

=

Will hides in his house with blankets hung up over his downstairs windows for two weeks, using his lamps for light and lugging a few more space heaters out of storage to avoid the trip to the shed for more firewood. For the first few days his lawn is so thick with news reporters and their crews that in order to walk the dogs he has to threaten them with Angus’ vicious bark since he’s the biggest of the pack and the only one besides Winston that doesn’t flop in front of the trespassers for a belly rub. Most of them leave after the seventh day of firm rebuttal but Will spends an extra three out of sight because he’s almost certain Freddie Lounds is lurking somewhere on his property, waiting with her camera.

The attempted murder of an FBI employee by his own student garners in-person visits from news outlets as far west as Chicago. Will makes his position on public testimony quite clear—he puts his phone on silent and ignores all of his emails and does an admirable job of pretending that he’s fallen off the face of the Earth.

Hannibal does the same.

He cancels appointments with all of the clients who’ll reschedule and drafts referrals for those who can’t on the way to the hospital. They only keep him for a few hours before releasing him for home recovery—Will waits with him there after the doctors identify the drug in his system and makes sure he’s settled before letting Jack drop him off in Wolf Trap. He’s surprised a few days later by a letter from Mrs. Zheng expressing her concern—it mentions that Hannibal sold his flamenco tickets and begged out of a weekend potluck and is letting his castle of a house be besieged by the same media vultures who tried pecking the story out of Will, ordering his groceries and holing himself up with his harpsichord until they withdraw. Will thinks about calling but he’s sure Hannibal is ignoring his phone too.

The only times Will leaves his house are to get his car, buy dog food, visit Abigail, and give his witness statement at the Bureau. Alana covers for some of his classes and another colleague, Dr. Zambrano, volunteers for the rest. Will takes a mound of paperwork home to complete his incident report and Dr. Orozco drops off some of his schoolwork for him. He spends the leave slaving away at his writing desk and entertaining his bored dogs and trying not to fall asleep.

The dreams are waiting for him.

He’s seen the stag every night since Jack burst into the Ferranti home and spirited Will and Hannibal away in his SUV, wrath and relief carved into his face for the entire ride. Will got home around 3:00 in the morning that night and fell face first in his bed, Hannibal’s blood still crusted under his nails. He closed his eyes and found himself in the Ferrantis’ basement again—except the concrete was covered in corpses, all of them Frankie, a pile of limbs marinating in the blood flowing freely from the pierced necks. The stag walked over the corpses to meet him, skulls splintering under its hooves, and shook its gory rack until dried bones and hunks of flesh littered the ground at Will’s feet. It did this over and over until Will was seated on a throne of remains.

The next night, the stag led him far into the woods and seated him across from the banker at the stump—instead of his stomach, Frankie’s head was on the plate, and Will ate it by the light of the candles stuck through the valet’s palms. The night after that, the stag impaled him on its tines and lifted him back into his tree bough bed, putting him to sleep on his sod pillow. Will doesn’t remember the rest of the dreams—just eyes that gleam the red of melted rock.

On the Monday he returns to work, Will starts answering his phone again. He has a message from Jack that says _good to have you back_ —it’s standoffish enough that Will assumes Alana paid him a loud and opinionated visit. There’s also a text from Hannibal asking him to _please reply at your convenience_ that has him pressing call the moment he gets back to Wolf Trap.

“Will,” Hannibal answers. “It’s good to hear from you.”

“You too,” Will replies, strangely out of breath. He tosses his bag to the side and settles into one of his chairs, the rocking mechanism squeaking under his weight. “Still a celebrity?”

“Unfortunately,” is the dry confirmation.

“How’s the arm?” Buster hops into Will’s lap. Will scratches behind his ears absently.

“Healing,” Hannibal says. “Your classes?”

Will drags his hand down his face, ignoring Buster’s whine at the loss. There’s an atmosphere of shock and anxiety permeating the Academy in the wake of the takedown of an enrolled perp, and there’s been talk circulating among the professors about the Board instituting quarterly interviews with the staff and students and class sit-ins to keep the media from coming down on them for negligence and ineptitude. “Tense,” he says finally. His students had been particularly subdued; a few left notes of concern on his desk on the way out but no one stayed behind.

“Understandable,” Hannibal offers. After a beat, he asks, quieter, “Are you well, Will?”

His voice is serious. Will considers the question seriously. Just last week he was drugged and kidnapped and watched his psychiatrist kill two men on the night of what was probably his first real date in the last five years. Will wants to think that in that moment he hadn’t known the man, but Hannibal had been as familiar as ever staring back at Will as he stuck Frankie with his own weapon, eyes matte and impenetrable.

Hannibal’s claim as a huntsman hadn’t been unfounded after all: Frankie and his father hadn’t lasted the night.

Will’s impulsive answer is _yeah, I’m well_ and it is, astoundingly, not an untruth. There’s a more honest answer, however, and he gives it instead.

He whispers, “I still feel like prey.”

He can feel the draft from the chasm again.

“I’ve kept your time slot open,” Hannibal says. “If you are available, I’d be gratified to see you there.”

Will says, “You’ll see me there.”

=

Will is surprised by another call three hours later. He’s in the middle of cooking chicken-stewed greens, the first non-microwaveable meal he’s made since the wine-tasting and fondue. He flicks vinegar at the heady broth and then passes out of the kitchen to retrieve his phone. The screen says _Noel Graham_. Will swallows and then answers, “Daddy?”

“Boy, you dead or not?” his father asks. His voice is much more abrupt than it is when he answers Will’s calls at Christmas and accepts his thanks for the aftershave.

“I’m not, sir,” Will says, abandoning his careful standard enunciation.

“Then why I gotta find out from the television you almost was?” his father demands.

“Sorry, sir,” Will says, curling his hand in the bottom of his t-shirt. “Got busy, is all.” Belatedly he remembers the greens on the stove and jogs back into the kitchen.

“You ever woulda called?” his father asks.

“’Course, sir,” Will says, stirring the pot. He doesn’t call much outside of holidays but he would have gotten around to it once the hype died down. “’Course.”

Noel makes a noise like he doesn’t believe him, but his voice is softer when he asks, “He get you any way that counts?”

“Not hardly,” Will says, using prongs to lift the chicken leg out of the greens. The meat almost slides off the bone before he sets it down on a plate. 

“Heard you got some doctor made sure of that,” Noel observes. “Though he don’t look it.”

Will starts. He hasn’t been following the news coverage; he had no idea how they spun Hannibal’s involvement. “That’s right,” Will confirms. “Damn near took a bullet for me.”

“I could thank him for it,” Noel says. “You thanked him for it?”

Will thinks about Hannibal texting him first and making sure Will is going to show up for his appointment. He winces. “Not yet.”

“Boy,” his father says. “I raised you backward or I raised you civil?”

“Civil, sir,” Will answers. It takes some maneuvering for him to drain the greens in the sink and fork out a helping onto his plate next to the chicken. He explains himself, “He’s a hard man to thank. I got ‘til Friday to think how.”

“Will,” Noel says seriously. “How hard you gotta think how to thank the man who bit your bullet?”

Will goes still. “Daddy…” 

“I taught you fishing,” his father sighs. “That Crawford makes you try, but you’re no man for hunting.” Will doesn’t have to see him shrug to know that he does it. “If you got someone what can do it for you, it ain’t no business of mine to be anything but grateful. You thank him for me.”

“Yes, sir,” Will says. He lets out a long breath and takes his plate to the table. “Yes, sir, I will.”

=

Will takes breakfast to Alana. She’s in her temporary office, the room delegated to her by the Academy for the duration of her guest-lecturing tenure, scribbling on a notepad and listening to, Will guesses, the recording of a recent interview with a BSHCI inmate. She’s made do with the ugly slate walls and rigid furniture by hanging reproduction Georgia O’Keefe canvases; she looks like a bird of paradise herself in her blank button-down and tropical skirt.

He knocks on the open door to get her attention.

“Will,” she says with pleasure upon seeing him, taking out her headphones.

“Morning,” he says, holding aloft a plastic bag.

They eat their parfaits in the chairs next to the office’s small window. Will digs through the yogurt and granola for the raspberries and blackberries but leaves the strawberries at the bottom of the cup. Alana takes their garbage and puts it away for trash and recycling later, and then turns on him with a look that indicates she’s going to regretfully but necessarily make him uncomfortable.

“Something awful happened to you,” she says. “But I know you already have someone to talk to.”

Will does his best to not outwardly react. “I went to my appointment on Friday, yeah.”

“Hannibal did something awful to protect you,” she points out. “I just want to know if that’s changed anything for you two.”

Will’s brow furrows. “I still trust him with my mind. Now I trust him with the rest of me too.”

Alana’s eyebrows go all the way up and Will wonders if he’s made a tactical error. He amends, “I don’t feel any different showing up for our conversations.”

“You’ve seen a very different part of Hannibal,” she says. “A very shocking part.” Will wonders if she’s talking for herself too. “I don’t want you to be surprised or hurt if that manifests as a change in your dynamic.”

Will’s shoulders come up. “Change is inevitable,” he says with more flippancy than Alana deserves. As an apology he adds, “I’m not afraid of change.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Alana says, sounding unconvinced. “I’m only concerned—ethically—about Hannibal remaining your psychiatrist in the face of that change.”

Will is aware that he’s being childish. “Hannibal isn’t really my psychiatrist.”

For a moment obstinacy settles over her face and Will thinks she’s going to raze him down like she does Jack. Then she mellows and she thanks him for breakfast and lets him scurry to his class.

=

It’s half dark when Beverly shows up at Will’s house, the west corner of the sky bright as a robin’s egg and the east bleeding to black. She comes to Wolf Trap directly from Washington Dulles, luggage from her long vacation still stuffed in the backseat of her car, and is faded with jetlag and stale makeup when he opens his front door.

“You asshole,” she says immediately, and tugs him into a hug. She smells like sunflowers and something fermented.

Will stalls, caught off guard. She doesn’t seem bothered by him neglecting to hug back; she just squeezes him once and then pulls back to tell him sternly, “Stop being so popular, huh, champ?”

“I’ll do my best,” he offers. That’s all they say about it.

Beverly goes back to the car to fetch the case of beer she bought on the way over and the game she keeps in her trunk. The dogs are happy to see her again, sniffing at her clothes and licking hopefully at her knuckles. Will hauls the skeleton of the motor he was working on into to his laundry room to make room on the floor, and Beverly sets up the Scrabble board while he retrieves what little snack food he has in his pantry.

She looks critically at the blue corn chips and hot salsa, white cheddar popcorn, candied trail mix and Girl Scout thin mints he deposits in front of her. “Excellent,” she says. “You keep score.”

Will wins the first game by a landslide with ‘jambeaux’, and Beverly fights him about it even after he shows her the definition. She tallies points for the next game and beats him narrowly with ‘toga’. She reveals herself to be a fantastically bad sport. Will laughs harder than he has in months.

Eventually they wrap themselves in Will’s spare quilts and migrate to the porch where the chilly air keeps the beer cold. The bloody dog lays its bulk at Will’s feet. Gizmo makes himself fit in Beverly’s lap.

They’re a lot tipsier when Beverly looks over at him and tells him, “Congrats on landing the biggest cock on the block.”

Will spits up beer. “What?”

“Lecter’s top of the food chain,” she proclaims. “Half the country knows it. Sounds like cheers to me.” She clinks her bottle shakily against Will’s.

Will sputters.

“You’re queen of the jungle, Will,” she says earnestly.

“You’re drunk,” he says. She laughs at him.

They drink until it’s too chilly to sit outside anymore, and then they retreat and play another game. Will thinks about the hand on the back of his neck. Beverly wins.

=

It’s the very last day of fall. The brittle sunlight breaks on the spires of the bare tree branches. The cold has leeched the color out of the sky, and it’s a long scar of bleached blue stretching from horizon to horizon. The sun is a pale disc still low across the frosty fields—Will wakes up to its weak rays slanting in through his windows.

He doesn’t bother putting on clothes as he levers out of bed to kick on a second space heater and get his coffee brewing. He kneels in his shirt and underwear to kiss his dogs good morning and pour their food, and waits shivering while the floorboards warm slowly under his bare legs. His goosebumps recede as Rusty and Toast flop down on either side of him, waiting to eat.

Without warning the bloody dog tears itself away from the bowls and goes to sit in front of the door. Toast rushes to fill its space but Angus detaches as well to jump into one of the armchairs and bark once at the window. A half-minute later Will hears gravel crunching under tires and the slam of a car door. He considers finding himself some pants, but when he sees how the bloody dog’s ears perk up he merely continues combing his fingers through Dakota’s long hair.

The wooden stairs barely creak under Hannibal’s weight as he climbs Will’s porch. Unsurprisingly, he’s carrying something in a blue ceramic container; he tucks it under his arm as he lifts a hand to deliver three clipped knocks.

Will gets to his feet and opens the door as he is. “Morning.”

Hannibal is a gentleman about it but Will’s neck still heats when his eyes flit down. “Good morning, Will.”

Will steps aside to let him in. Hannibal shuts the door behind himself and is immediately surrounded by Will’s enthusiastic pack. A hissed command to _relax_ keeps their paws on the ground instead of on Hannibal’s thighs; Will wonders if Hannibal knows he’s broadcasting his approval.

“Here,” Will says, reaching out to take the container and carry it into the kitchen. When he comes back, Hannibal has shed his coat and is carefully kneeling in just jeans and a red sweater to run broad hands across the tops of his dogs’ heads. The bloody dog gets a disproportionate amount of the petting.

When Will recovers from the sight of denim, he takes the coat and hangs it where stray canine hair won’t defile it. When he turns around Hannibal is looking—Will tries and fails to suppress a flush.

Hannibal indicates his state of undress. “You intend to spend your Saturday in?”

Will shrugs. Though he hadn’t woken up with any conscious intentions, he admits, “I was thinking about taking a run with the dogs. Before the weather turns too cold.”

Hannibal rises back to his feet, one hand dangling to scratch the bloody dog behind the ear. “I believe your family would greatly enjoy it.”

Will hadn’t realized he was so easy—the smile he gives Hannibal in response is dangerously transparent. Ashamed of himself, he ducks his head and asks, “Coffee?”

“Please,” Hannibal says. They relocate to the kitchen.

They’re both aware that Will’s store-bought coffee is inferior to whatever organic beans Hannibal imports and grinds himself, but Will pours it into tacky dog print mugs and figures that should count for something. Hannibal doesn’t complain about his _Lady and the Tramp_ cup; he accepts milk and sugar and thanks Will graciously.

“You look cozy,” Will points out. “I had no idea you knew about informal clothing.”

Hannibal gives him a look. “I must wear something while I have my things laundered.”

Will lets Hannibal turn the oven on and heat his container in there. While they wait for it to warm, Hannibal sits at the table and explains, “I mistakenly made enough for two. I didn’t care to let it go to waste.”

“A likely story,” Will muses, leaning against the counter. Nobody makes the drive to Wolf Trap on a whim. He smothers his smile with another sip. “What is it?”

“A simple breakfast casserole,” Hannibal says loftily. “Egg and potato with sour cream and picante sauce.”

“No meat?” Will says, surprised.

Hannibal looks smug. “And sausage.”

“What kind?” Will asks, draining the last of his coffee. He turns around to rinse his mug.

“Venison,” Hannibal tells him.

Conspiratorially, he adds, “I caught it myself.”

The epiphany hits Will sideways. He sees the bloody dog dragging dead things to his porch, spitting out dog carcasses at his feet. For a fraction of a second it’s just the weight of _knowing_ —then the realizations barrel into him: the insider knowledge, the surgical incisions, the surgical trophies. The _dinner parties_.

The mug slips from Will’s hands and crashes into the sink. The noise makes both him and the dogs jump.

“Will?” Hannibal asks.

Will looks at Hannibal. He’s alert in his chair, halfway through folding up the sleeves of his button-down with mathematical precision, exposing a calculated amount of forearm. Will looks at the power in his strong hands and sturdy wrists— _Hannibal does not have the body of a therapist_.

“Will,” Hannibal repeats. “What’s wrong?”

Will takes a step back.

Hannibal observes the blankness in his face, and the rising horror behind it. “Will,” he says, and the chasm yawns wide open.

Will spins on his heel and dashes out of the kitchen, into the living room where his pack leaps up in alarm. He bursts out of the front door without stopping, and his dogs spill out after him.

=

Will runs for an hour and a half, until everything hurts. His bare feet are painful and seeping blood from countless lacerations, cut up by grass blades and rubbed raw by the decaying tree bark shards littering the floor of the forest stretching for miles around his property. His lungs are burning in his chest, shriveled with exertion; there’s a stitch in his side and his spit is thick from open-mouthed panting. He stumbles several times but fear keeps him staggering forward.

His body is weakening but his mind is racing. Cold terror whittles his thoughts down, sharpens them neat and linear as he follows his dogs through the woods, leaping across fallen logs and trying to keep his footing on the slippery carpet of brown and gold leaves. He puts the mirror of his empathy up to everything he knows about Hannibal and tries to devise some way out of this that doesn’t end in him displayed as a grotesque tableau.

Hannibal is on his trail. Will can’t hear anything above his and his dogs’ labored breathing, but Hannibal won’t be far behind. Will knew the moment he ran out the door that in a straight chase Hannibal would hold all the advantages. He works over the problem of how to play to his rapidly diminishing strengths.

A whistle pierces the chill air before he can solve it.

Will flinches hard at the sound, dramatic in the forest silence, and feels panic grip him by the spine as all of his dogs start to heel. He almost hisses for them to _keep up_ , heart in his throat about what Hannibal might do to them, before he realizes that he’ll be marginally more difficult to track without the clear prints of eight dogs to follow.

He feels agonized with dread but he doesn’t stop running.

He barely sees the woods around him. The spiny, serrated fronds of a thistle patch scrape at his ankles. The outstretched fingers of a pitch pine leave a smear of sap on his face. He doesn’t know where he’s going—without Angus bounding ahead or Winston pressing close to his calves or the bloody dog directing the pack he feels directionless. His careful tread turns into a dash, agitated by desperation.

He gets briefly tangled in some jimsonweed and goes down hard. He wastes precious seconds extricating himself, and the thought of Hannibal overtaking him brings the cold terror back. In an instant he has a plan—he climbs to his feet and orients himself and takes off through the sweetspire shrubs to his right.

He pants through another mile until he finds the spot he’s looking. Ahead of him is a familiar copse of evergreens, full and flowering in the face of the impending winter blight. He jogs into the cluster, slipping through the tight-knit trunks until he finds a big tree with sagging boughs. He grabs holds of a low branch and, gritting his teeth through the effort, swings up. He’s not a short man but he’s slender enough to settle on a wide limb and arrange its foliage around him. When he’s sufficiently hidden, he sags against the wide trunk and takes a rest.

For ten minutes he trembles and sweats out his fatigue, muscles shuddering and jumping under his skin like those of a hard-ridden horse. His shirt is soaked and the more he comes down the more he feels the blustery air through the wet cloth, nipples tightening from the cold. He regulates his breathing as best he can and tries not to shake loose from his perch.

By the time Hannibal appears underfoot, he’s utterly still.

Hannibal is noiseless in his approach. Will sees that he too is barefoot, and the needles and soft soil on the ground absorb his delicate footfalls. He steps slowly through the copse, head tilted back and eyes closed. His nostrils flare once and for a tense moment Will thinks it’s all over.

But Hannibal merely continues on through the trees, turning north at the edge and heading toward the place where the pants and shoes Will left on the ground are still lying discarded.

Will watches him go, hardly daring to breath until the red sweater disappears from view. He counts the seconds for twenty minutes, dawdling as long as he dares, giving himself as much of a break as is wise before carefully lowering back down to the forest floor. He stretches out his tight thighs and rolls his neck until it cricks, and then he starts running south.

=

Will goes to the bear cave he found a month ago, a fissure at the base of a stack of boulders. It’s abandoned, dung pellets dried into the dirt and scattered fish bones cluttering the front, and spacious enough that the rear is in total shadow. Will climbs the boulders and takes frantic sips from the chilly rainwater pooled on the uneven rock at the top, a balm to his cracked lips and sore throat. When he’s finished he jumps down and forages around the mouth of the cave, carrying his findings in the upturned hem of his shirt: tart, tough cranberries not yet withered by the cold, a handful of kudzu, dandelions stems stripped of their spore afros, and soft, overripe cloudberries gone vibrant yellow.

It takes the edge off of his hunger. He wipes his mouth with the juice-stained front of his shirt and crawls into the very back of the cave, curling up to conserve body heat and dropping like a stone into a two-hour nap.

When he wakes up the weak sun is tipping toward the other horizon. By his guess Hannibal has already followed the dead-end of the stale scent and returned to the copse to find his real trail. It’s only a matter of time before he finds the bear cave.

Will takes a chance and spends the rest of the afternoon there, until the pale sky blushes dusk orange. He wracks his mind for a plan, some sort of strategy for surviving Hannibal, but his dad was right—he’s no man for hunting. He has no idea what to do.

Helplessness tires him out again. He dozes for a fitful twenty minutes.

When he jerks awake, heart hammering like a hummingbird’s, he feels the stag’s breath on the back of his neck and knows he’s lingered too long.

He strains his ears to hear movement outside the cave and isn’t reassured by the rustling quiet of the forest approaching night. He presses himself against the wall of the cave, pulse throbbing in his neck, and holds still. For a moment there’s nothing of note except the scuttle of a squirrel through the underbrush outside—then Will feels a tremor in the rock at his back and explodes into motion.

He clears the mouth of the cave, animal terror raising the hairs on the back of his neck, only an instant before Hannibal lands in front of it.

Will sprints. The soles of his feet scream in protest—the pain is trivial compared to the foghorn of panic blaring in his head. He tries to think where to run but the heavy clop of hooves right beside him scatters his thoughts.

Instinct has Will swerving to the side when a hand darts out to catch him by the neck—instead of clamping down like a noose the fingers claw him from nape to shoulder, welts rising up in their wake. Will hisses and stumbles and puts on a burst of speed, ignoring the scratches burning directly opposite the bloody dog’s.

Up ahead he sees a shelf of earth break off abruptly above a shallow ravine, a notched wall of rock standing tall on the other side of the ditch. He makes a split-second decision and races toward it.

Behind him he fees Hannibal reaching out a second time, trying to hook his fist in the collar of Will’s shirt. Will ducks and, when he nears the sharp jut of rock, makes the jump.

He slams into the rock wall chest first. It knocks the wind out of him, but he gets his arms above the ledge and pulls the rest of his body up. He stalls there for a moment, dazed, before the fear of pursuit has him scrambling to his feet. He takes off and doesn’t look back.

=

By the time Will reaches the river the sky is bruise-colored and blackening fast. The water is a purple ribbon in the oncoming darkness, forty feet across and cluttered at the bottom with piles of rocks that occasionally break the surface. Will hears it before he sees it—a loud gurgle cutting a wide swath through the woods.

He skids to a halt along the pebbled bank and bends forward, gulping down air and putting his forehead between his knees. He tries not to vomit. His muscles are in tatters and he’s on the verge of passing out, but the cold terror hones his awareness to the single point of knowledge that he can’t stay here.

He knows that Hannibal didn’t follow him over the ravine. Hannibal is an intelligent predator—Will can see him standing at the ledge, watching Will disappear into the trees on the other side and scheming. Will figures he probably has no more than thirty minutes before he’s upon him again.

He raises his head to look at the river. Grim disappointment fills him; he’s at a place where he can’t cross. Briefly he considers the risk of jumping in, buying time by breaking off his trail, but he knows the water is freezing—his muscles would lock and he’d sink like a ship. If he didn’t immediately drown, he likely wouldn’t have enough strength to pull himself out wherever he ended up downriver. And if he did manage to get out, he’d be sitting wet and uncovered out in the forest, practically inviting hypothermia.

He’s cold and hungry and totally spent. He has to stop, which means he has to stop Hannibal.

He straightens up and begins heading upriver. He jogs along for almost two miles, until the river narrows and the rocks on the bank yield to water-softened mud. The relief that floods him at the sight of a fallen log bridging the river makes his knees weak.

He drops to the ground, catching himself on his hands. Then he starts to dig.

He digs until his fingers are stiff and swollen, until his palms are red from cold and scraped from frozen muck. He keeps his attention focused on the woods to his left. When he judges that he’s dug enough, the hairs on the back of his neck starting to rise, he pulls some creeping phlox and uproots a mat of pondweed to cover the loose ground and stands up.

Hurrying as much as he dares, he mounts the log and crosses the river. His going is slow—the wood is wet and covered in mossy slime. He resorts to inching across.

He makes it to the other side without mishap, but when he looks up the stag is crossing the water after him. Will bends down and grabs the log’s dead roots and, in a burst of adrenaline-fueled energy, rolls his side of the fallen tree off of the bank.

It hits the river with a gargantuan splash. The force of the current drags it off of the other bank, and it dunks beneath the water. When it resurfaces the stag resurfaces with it; the stag treads water while the river carries the trunk swiftly away. Will sags back to the ground and waits.

A minute and a half passes, and then Hannibal appears.

He doesn’t emerge from the trees as much as he detaches from them, red sweater unnoticeable until it’s suddenly visible. The cloth expands with the tide of his great breaths, but he’s otherwise unruffled. The sight of him skews Will’s pulse erratic. They look at each other across the water.

Hannibal takes a step forward onto the bank.

His instincts kick in too late—the ground Will excavated crumbles under his weight and the river sweeps it away. He falls twisting like a big cat—like a lion—into the water.

Will doesn’t linger. He reels upright and stumbles off.

=

It’s past nightfall. The moon is a white sickle in the sky, a sliver too thin to cast much light. Under the mantle of full darkness the forest is a mass of black shapes and a maze of tricky footing. Will is tottering almost blind through the undergrowth, arms crossed over his chest to try and contain his violent shivering. His eyelids feel like weights. He’s clinging to consciousness by his nails.

He has no idea what happened to Hannibal, but fear continues to galvanize him forward. He can’t unsee the stag paddling unperturbed in the river. At the least he knows he’s won a huge delay, but he’s still more terrified than he’s ever been. If Hannibal survived, the next twelve hours will be the most dangerous of his life.

Will is exhausted, however. He’s fuel-less and dehydrated. He has no more reserves to call upon, and no more plans. He wants to sleep more than he wants to live, and he’s ready to bed down on the next square of oatgrass he trips over. For a moment he genuinely thinks about it.

A twig cracks ten feet in front of him.

Will’s lung seize. Fear escalates into panic but his body won’t obey the instinct to flee. He stands paralyzed, eyes trained on the darkness in front of him.

The bloody dog trots out of the bushes.

Will sobs. The bloody dog stops directly in front of him. Will collapses to his knees and throws his arms around it. It allows the contact for a short, warm minute before it backs away far enough to spit a dead squirrel on the ground between them.

Will stares at the carcass. Its blood is black as pitch in the weak moonlight. After a moment Will dips his fingers in it and rubs streaks of it up his forearms and down his shins. It dries quickly; the smell settles on his skin.

The bloody dog turns and disappears into the shrubbery it came out of. Will uses the last bit of his strength to get up and follow.

The walk is short. It leads him to the hollowed-out pillar of a big tree trunk. The hole at the bottom is impossibly dark; two eyes gleam like lanterns in the black but the bloody dog chases the fox from the hovel in a matter of moments and leaves it free.

Will gets down on his belly and slithers inside, brushing aside strands of spider webs with a feeble hand. He has to fold himself up to fit inside, but when he does he’s almost warm and so tired the discomfort doesn’t register anyway. The bloody dog licks his bare ankle and then scampers off. Will turns his face into the wall of chipped wood and goes limp.

=

He wakes up once in the middle of the night. At first he thinks his heartbeat is too loud; then he realizes the rhythmic thud is the muted sound of big hooves striking the ground in a circle around the hovel.

His immediate thought is that he’s been found, but the part of him that bit the bloody dog’s ear and sentenced Hannibal to drowning gentles the rest of him with the placid whisper that _he’s safe_ in his hovel with his markings in blood.

Hannibal can’t smell his fear.

=

Will wakes up again just before sunrise. Outside the hovel the forest is a muted blue, lightening in gradients as the night flees from the morning. There’s frost on the buttonweed in front of the tree but Will feels fine inside the hole—he uncoils slowly, shifting onto his front so he can crawl out.

He emerges covered in dirt and grass, dried mud peeling from his fingers and crumbled leaves stuck on the bottom of his tender feet. A horned owl in a neighboring tree hoots at him once before turning over for sleep. Will crosses his legs under him and, a smile cracking across his face, sits under the dawn.

In the creeping gold of the morning, he feels something like _triumph_.

He’s aware that he can’t do another day—he’s cramping with hunger, stomach wringing itself like a rag, and stiff with cold. He’s unfit. He’s probably sick, soles throbbing and inflamed and skin crusted with the dried blood of a wild animal. He doesn’t care.

He lasted the night.

Eventually he stands up, wincing as his weight busts the thin scabs on his heels. He limps out of the small clearing surrounding the hollow tree and searches the surrounding woods for a pond or brook. A hundred yards away he finds a tiny still pool and sits down at the edge. There he washes his face and hands and feet, shuddering at the freezing temperature. For breakfast he snaps a few of the cattails around the water and chews on the shoots.

He remains there until mid-morning, letting his feet dry clean and eating raw groundnut flowers until the hunger pangs ease completely. He lies back on the grass and watches a passing box turtle and conserves his energy because he knows intuitively that today Hannibal is going to catch him.

He intends to fight back when he does.

=

It’s almost noon, the sun clear as crystal in the cloudless winter sky, and less bitterly cold than it was that morning. Will is picking his way back toward his house, a little to the southwest if he’s kept his head right, shivering hard in his dirty t-shirt but in almost bacchanal good cheer. His skin prickles with something like anticipation, something vatic and expectant.

Will is just clearing a thicket when he hears him.

There’s no distinct noise, no crash through the underbrush—just a soft exhale out of sync with the breathing of the two bold fawns creeping curiously along on Will’s right. Will takes off like a rocket, spooking the fawns, and to his surprise hears Hannibal abandon stealth and launch straight into the chase after him.

There’s a treeless hill up ahead, a tall mound made taller by wild fescue, and Will runs to it. Hannibal is much faster than he ever would have thought; Will can feel him closing the distance between them. He pumps his legs hard, straining to make it to the knoll’s crest—right as he reaches the top he’s bulldozed from behind.

Hannibal’s weight takes him to the ground and they go tumbling down the hill’s other side. Will’s face gets smashed into the ground and his ribs compressed when Hannibal—sweater dry but jeans damp at the bottom—rolls over him, but when they land at the bottom he yanks himself away and springs to his feet.

Hannibal locks a hand around his ankle and tugs him back down. He drops his weight on Will again, trying to crush him into immobility, and Will swings every punch he can, kneeing and scratching everywhere he can reach until Hannibal lifts him with his frightening strength and throws him back down on his belly.

Will is winded but he immediately starts bucking, trying to push himself up and throw Hannibal off of him. Hannibal delivers three quick jabs to Will’s exposed side, making him drop back to the ground. Cold terror spears Will again, allows his thoughts to sing straight like an arrow, and he slams the heel of his hand down on Hannibal’s hurt arm.

Hannibal grunts and his hold loosens. Will elbows him off and throws himself into a run.

He doesn’t go farther than the line of trees twenty feet away—Hannibal is only a second behind him, catching up without difficulty and grabbing him around the middle. He hauls Will up against a thick tree trunk, and Will’s involuntary bark of laughter upon impact rings in the crisp air around them.

Hannibal pauses. Will uses the instant to try to struggle away. He feels Hannibal’s bangs brush the nape of his neck a second before Hannibal bites down hard on the back of his neck. Will goes still with good instinct.

He remembers his own words: _if not Occoquan, then the Ripper_. He closes his eyes and waits.

Instead of tearing out a mouthful of flesh, Hannibal clamps his jaws just hard enough to make Will cry out before releasing him. Will’s heartbeat skips. Without warning Hannibal starts biting him everywhere, on the knobs of his spine and the meat of his shoulder, hard enough to leave marks but no harder. Will squirms under the assault, bewildered and aching from the bites.

Suddenly Hannibal pushes him flat against the tree, arms coming up like bands to secure Will to him and nose burying in the bruising crook of Will’s throat. They’re aligned from top to bottom—Will can feel the brand of Hannibal’s erection through their clothes.

His entire body goes slack.

He has one cheek scraped by the tree bark and the other tickled by flyaway strands of Hannibal’s hair, shirt rucked up and the waistband of his underwear fisted in Hannibal’s hand. That’s when he realizes he’s hard too.

Hannibal thrusts against him once, inhaling deeply. The contact electrifies Will, striking his lower back like lightning and arcing outward to his extremities. Before he can stop himself he thrusts back.

Hannibal kicks Will’s feet apart and then aligns them so he can rut against Will’s ass, hot and hard even through his denim and Will’s boxer-briefs. He buries his teeth in Will’s skin and pulls him back into the clipped rhythm of his hips, squeezing Will immobile and dragging the shape of him up and down Will’s cleft. Cold terror thawing into something scorching and thought-scattering, Will pants against the tree and arches into the rutting as best he can.

That’s the moment he realizes Hannibal isn’t going to kill him.

The knowledge turns his veins molten and rekindles his squirming. This time Hannibal lets him thrash, loosening his iron hold to relocate his hands to the hem of Will’s stained shirt. He starts to tug up. Some of the desperate burn in Will’s blood abates and he has a single clear thought; he goes still while Hannibal divests him of his top.

When Hannibal has the shirt up around Will’s armpits he steps back to make space enough to pull it off. Will raises his arms tamely, and then, while his hands are up and Hannibal’s distracted, grabs an overhead branch and pulls with all his might.

The branch doesn’t break, merely cracks, but a thousand needles pour down like a storm. Hannibal turns his face away instinctively and Will ducks out of his hold, slipping his shirt and sprinting further into the tree cover.

Behind him, Hannibal snarls.

Will’s skin crawls. He’s never heard a man sound like that.

Another laugh bursts out of him, the same fey sound that welled up in him in the Ferrantis’ basement.  It’s the last noise he makes for a while.

=

Will reaches home by mid-afternoon. The going-back is faster since he’s no longer trying to lose Hannibal in the woods—his pace is sedate instead of frantic, a jog to prolong his stamina. He cheats by cutting across a residential road, a back lane with no paint on the asphalt; the houses are spaced apart like charms on a bracelet and the yards and porches are empty, most everyone still trickling back from church.

He sights his little farmhouse through the trees, eaves dripping water from the melting icicle stubs clinging to the gutters. He speeds up, anxious, and shoves through the unkempt hedges on the edge of his yard.

His dogs are lying on the patch of lawn with the most sun, dew twinkling on their drying pelts. Dakota is curled up next to Angus; Toast and Gizmo are burrowed under Rusty’s bulk. Buster is taking a piss by the tree. Winston perks up when Will appears.

Will can't afford more than a shaky sigh of relief, however—he streaks past them, rushing up the porch and in the door, slamming it shut behind him. He lets out a shout in surprise when it bangs open almost immediately.

He tears up the stairs, skin prickling in the heat of his home, and hears them creak with Hannibal’s weight barely a step behind him. Will loses time struggling with the doorknob of the upstairs bedroom and is caught right as he forces it open, arms clamping around his belly.

Hannibal throws him bodily onto the bare bed; the rickety frame gives an awful shriek. Will ends up on his back, the mattress springs so old he sinks instead of rebounding. His attempts to push back up are thwarted first by the pallet and then by Hannibal dropping on top of him, his weight making Will’s arms collapse and his breadth forcing Will’s legs apart.

Their eyes meet. The stained glass red of Hannibal’s are absorbed by his dilated pupils, and the darkness behind them is endless.

Hannibal barely pauses—he gets both hands under the band of Will’s underwear and tears the shorts apart, flinging the ruined fabric across the room. Will is totally bare underneath him. The feeling of exposure drives Will to pull hard at Hannibal’s red sweater at the same time Hannibal reaches to undo his fly, and in due time they’re both naked.

Then Hannibal falls on him, putting his big hands on the back of Will’s thighs and pushing them up so he can rut into him again, cocks pressed together this time. Will hisses at the sting of fingernails digging into his skin combined with the hot, dry slide of them together. He reaches back blindly to the bedside table and gropes for the lube he left there.

Hannibal gets it first. He doesn’t look away from him as he slicks his hand and brings it down to Will’s hole. Will licks his own palm and reaches down at the same time to grab Hannibal’s cock, and they both grunt.

Will grits his teeth at the quick press of a finger inside of him, too sudden and cruel enough to make his dick jump where it lies across his hip. He fists Hannibal hard and fast in the meantime, the spit on his hand thinning quickly as he runs it from base to tip, shuddering at the way Hannibal fattens in his grip. Neither one of them break eye contact as Hannibal adds a second and a third digit and Will swipes his thumb across the head, lifting his other hand to clutch Hannibal’s shoulder blade.

He stares into the chasm and maybe sees himself at the bottom.

Finally Hannibal sits up between Will’s legs and upends the lube over himself, letting Will pump the slick all over him until he’s dripping with it. Then he slots his hands behind Will’s knees and pushes his legs out until his thighs ache with the stretch, putting his cockhead to the place where Will opens. Will has time for a deep inhale before Hannibal shoves in.

Will breathes out a howl.

He scores his nails down Hannibal’s back, baring his teeth at the pressure and throb of him, how big and hurtful he is inside of him. Hannibal doesn’t wait for his discomfort—he draws back like a gun cocking and fucks in again. Will cries out; his dick leaks. Hannibal eats up the pain in his face, sips it and savors it, and starts up a tempo that makes Will want to cry.

He comes instead.

Hannibal doesn’t pause. He pounds through the clamp of Will’s muscles, the abrupt clench of his hole, and watches Will writhe in oversensitivity like the vision of him trembling under the onslaught of sensation is sustenance. He leans down so that Will’s hips come up off the mattress and fucks him bent in half until his dick jerks again, too soon and too raw.

Will finds the strength to shove at Hannibal’s chest, wincing briefly when he slips out but wasting no time before he throws himself to the side and claws onto his stomach. He braces himself on his elbows and lays his forehead on his wrists and spreads his knees, and Hannibal is quick to give him his cock again.

This way, his thrusts are punishing. From behind he feels bigger, and the angle slots him deeper inside Will, deep enough to cleave Will in two. Will grits his teeth and leans into it, lets his shoulders fall to the bed so he can take all of it, and bites the mattress until Hannibal’s rhythm falters into something urgent.

When Will comes again his dick twitches but doesn’t spurt, and his body arches so hard he can’t breathe. Hannibal buries himself inside Will and rides the contractions and spills into him for so long Will feels glutted and gorged.

He wilts, slumping to the bed and slipping off of Hannibal’s soft cock, panting hard. Hannibal lies down on top of him and pins him in place, burdening him with his mass. He reaches up to sink his dirty hand into Will’s curls; his arm blocks out the light. When Will closes his eyes, the darkness is complete.

He sleeps.

=

Will briefly stirs sometime after dusk. The sky is charred from the violent sunset and the upstairs bedroom is shrouded in gloom. He’s still on his front on the bare mattress, semen peeling on his belly, and half-crushed, one arm numb. He can feel Hannibal rubbing his thumb across the sap smeared on Will’s cheek, brushing the dirt off of his jaw.

Will growls. Hannibal leaves his crown of burs and twigs alone.

=

The next morning comes bright and freezing, with skeleton-white clouds and a sprinkle of snowflakes like bone dust. Will wakes up cold and alone. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands on quaking legs, shuddering when he starts leaking down his thighs. He hobbles into the bathroom and uses the toilet before wiping his body with a damp rag. When he’s relatively clean, he eases himself down the stairs.

The shutters in the living room are drawn, filtering out some of the blinding light. The two space heaters are glowing and pointed at the pile of Will’s dogs in their beds, and there’s an expert fire going in the hearth. It’s almost uncomfortably warm.

Hannibal is kneeling in front of the lit fireplace, nude, brushing snowflakes out of the bloody dog’s fur.

He glances up at Will’s entry, silent as he looks Will over but very obviously appreciative. The back of Will’s neck heats. Ducking his head, he goes over to his workbench where his phone is lying discarded, turning it on to check the time.

In three quick strides Hannibal is at his side. He snatches the phone from Will and throws it against the wall where it shatters. The dogs jerk awake, startled, and Angus starts barking.

Will frowns. Hannibal gives him an empty stare.

Will hushes Angus with a quiet _easy, boy_ and turns away, shuffling over to his bed and gingerly sitting down. Hannibal disappears into the kitchen and reappears with Will’s first aid kit, walking over and kneeling before Will.

Wordlessly Will offers his feet, and Hannibal draws healing hands across them.

=

Alana and Beverly show up almost at the same time, cars parked like twins in Will’s driveway. Alana steps carefully up Will’s porch in chic closed wedges that zip up her calves, bare knees red in the cold beneath her wool skirt; Beverly stomps up to his door mat in boots and thick tights. They’re both holding breakfast.

Will is dressed in clean flannel. Hannibal is once again in his red sweater and jeans, still warm from the dryer.

Alana is very surprised to see him there, and in that state. “It’s Monday,” she explains to Will, trying to look unruffled. “You missed class.”

Will assures her that he’s fine. Hannibal invites her to stay and eat.

“I wish I could,” Alana declines. That’s when Beverly knocks.

“Whoa,” she says when Will lets her. “Full house. My bad.” Hannibal invites her to the table too, and when she also declines he disappears into the kitchen. The moment he’s gone Beverly claps Will on the back and shakes his hand vigorously.

“Your majesty,” she says with drama. Will rebukes her only half-heartedly.

Alana and Beverly leave after Will assures them respectively that he’ll be along to the Academy and to the lab later. Will takes their gifts to the kitchen.

Hannibal has something going on the stove, a miracle meal made from the odds and ends in Will’s thinly stocked cabinets and the meat he saved from his casserole. He turns around and takes the ladies’ food from Will and drops it unceremoniously in the trash. Then he sits Will down and makes them both a plate.

Will feels Hannibal’s eyes on him as he picks up his fork. He summons the nerve to return the stare. Stomach churning with nausea, he takes a bite.

The chasm yawns wide.

Will confuses himself by preening.

=

Jack has words for Will when he obeys the summons to his office. He’s somewhere between concerned and pissed off, seated like a judge behind his big desk, sipping from a coffee and dropping it back down to the top like a gavel.

“You can’t go MIA whenever it suits you, Will,” he says tersely.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Will says. “It was a rough weekend.”

Jack makes a disgruntled noise. “At the least you could have answered your damn phone.”

“I’m sorry, Jack,” he repeats.

Jack subsides eventually, placated. He scoots back in his chair so he can get to his feet and start briefing Will on a case that Fulton County police in Georgia have turned over to them. Will listens meekly.

“Take a look through this,” Jack concludes, sliding a file across the desk. “Head down to the lab when you’re ready.”

Will nods dutifully. He flips through the case details with one hand and pets the antlers of the stag, head nestled idly in his lap, with the other.

=

Will takes a stack of semester-end papers to the diner off the interstate and grades them over his French toast special. As per usual, approximately ten percent of his students chose to center their thesis on the Chesapeake Ripper. Of them, only five are topically coherent. Of those, only one is insightful.

— _killer who escapes psychotic classification and eludes psychological evaluation…an immorality that touches godhood instead of criminality in its condescension…wielding sophisticated artistry and bestial brutality with the determination that they are two sides of the same coin—_

Will ignores Hobbs where he sits snickering on the other side of the booth and scribbles out a full score.

=

The dusk is pink as flesh when Will takes his toolbox and his whiskey onto the porch, the day decomposing into a dark, rotted night. The deck is wet from the snow that’s blown under the awning; the wind whips flakes against Will’s face and he pulls Hannibal’s new coat tighter around himself. Inside the house his dogs scratch at the closed front door, listening to him unscrew the crooked screen and set it leaning on the porch railing. The top two hinges are broken, the third warped from supporting all the weight—a casualty of Sunday’s homecoming. He’ll install the new one when it comes in tomorrow.

When he’s finished prying up the button finials he sits in his chair and lets the whiskey offset the cold. His pack whines at him through the door but it’s too cold now to let them frolic outside until bedtime. He sips his two fingers and gets comfortably numb.

The bloody dog slinks into the yard right as the outside lanterns come on. In its muzzle are the shredded remains of some ravaged animal, its guts the same pink as the twilight. The hanging innards are marbled with white veins of thin fat, leaking still-hot blood that melts the snow in the bloody dog’s wake.

Will watches it approach and stop at the foot of the stairs. Its empty eyes absorb the porch light and Will.

Will knocks back the last of his drink. Then he gets up and opens the door and lets his dogs dash over to the carcass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who read, gave kudos, bookmarked, and commented! I'm a piece of shit about expressing how grateful I am that you all gave this a chance, but I truly appreciate each and every one of you. I hope you've had as much fun as I have.
> 
> This was definitely not supposed to be so long. I was definitely not supposed to do so much googling. This started out as an excuse to write a sexy chase scene and ended up taking over everything and occupying me for a month and a half. Best laid plans and so on, I suppose. Either way I enjoyed my first foray into the Hannibal fandom. Thank you guys once again for making it so great!
> 
> And now. To actually watch the rest of the show...

**Author's Note:**

> I also exist at t-pock.tumblr.com.


End file.
